Your Life And Mine
by flawlesspeasant
Summary: Alex is a newly single dad, struggling to cope with raising his three-year old daughter on his own when he meets Jo, the town's newest resident who's struggling with a mysterious, rocky past of her own. As secrets unravel, it becomes clear that the world truly is a small place and the two find that it is never too soon to find love again.
1. New Routine

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing but the plot.

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The air this morning is cool with a slight breeze in it, ideal for an early morning. It is the end of May, transitioning into June and the weather has managed to stay with a pleasant springtime feel to it. It's never too hot but it balances nicely as it's never too cold either. It's the perfect balance between humid and breezy and as long as it stays like this, I'll spend every morning before coffee sitting out here on the front porch. Still wearing my comfortable pajamas, I push open screen door and step out onto the faded light blue painted wood of my porch. The floorboards creak when I put my weight on them, a stout reminder that my next project is to replace these old things. I take my usual seat on the white wooden swing hanging from the ceiling on my porch and stare out onto the road as I always do, every morning before I go back inside and grab the pot of coffee I put on before I come out here. I try to make this a routine of mine, to come sit out here for at least half an hour before I start my daily responsibilities. The only time I'm not able to keep up with this is when I have to work the morning shift, which is only throughout the week.

The houses that line the street that I live on all have similar appearances, the true definition of typical suburbs. Each house sits proudly at two stories tall, painted with colors that vary between light blue, gray and tan. It's a pretty quiet neighborhood that I live in but if all is silent, I can hear the bustling of Pensacola, the big city that's only about a two mile drive from here. As I'm sitting on my porch , a soft breeze blows and carries the scent of saltwater and crisp morning air off the ocean that is less than a mile from where we live. For as long as I've been living in Florida, I still have yet to grow tired of smelling the saltwater that the morning breezes carry over. There's really nothing like fresh air, especially in the morning after just waking up. My wife always used to say that no air is like the fresh air we get while sitting on our front porch and I have to agree. One of the reasons why I love our front porch is because it is the only porch on the block that gets the brunt of the wind.

My house is the only house on the block that is slightly different from every other house, by the way. It's like a typical beach house—made of white painted wood with glass windows and sliding glass doors, complete with light blue shutters. What makes my house different is the fenced in yard and the fact that I have yet to switch out the rundown wooden door for the same glass front door that every other house has. When we first bought this house six years ago, the paint was chipping off the wood, the shutters were hanging off and since the foundation is wooden, the porch was caving in. It was a real fixer-upper but that's why my wife wanted it. She said it had a homely feel to it and I didn't believe it then but I believe it now. The house looks just as good as any other house on the block now. One of her favorite parts about the house was that the front door is wooden as opposed to glass and for that reason, I just can't bring myself to take it out. She liked the door...of all things for her to like about the house, she liked the door. Simple things like doors made her happy.

Mrs. Jensen silently creeps by early this morning, dragging her dog behind her by a red leash. Once I see Mrs. Jensen, I know that it's a typical Sunday morning here in Millerton. I can recall the only time I ever went without seeing Mrs. Jensen walking her dog on a Sunday morning. It was three years ago, on the morning that Mr. Jensen had his stroke. Ever since I moved into this house six years ago, I can recall every single Sunday—except that Sunday—that Mrs. Jensen walked by the house dragging her old dog, Gibby. Millerton is such a sleepy town and since nothing ever happens around here, Mr. Jensen's stroke was the topic of discussion for a week. Pretty sad when an old man's stroke is the only source of news in a town but like I said, Millterton is the epitome of boring. I used to complain to my wife about how we lived in such an old, boring town and she always retorted that Millerton "isn't boring, just simply peaceful". This is exactly the kind of town she always wanted to live in though, which is probably why it never bothered her much that all our neighbors are past retirement age.

The only person in this neighborhood that has a job is me. Not because everyone I live next to are a bunch of bums, it's just that literally, every single one of my neighbors have retired. The most they ever do is walk their dogs like Mrs. Jensen, tend to their gardens like Mrs. Fisher and fix up the exterior of their house like Mr. Watkins. The best part about living by elderly people is that I get to share in everything they do. For example, Mrs. Jensen has a thing for baking so I usually get elaborate Christmas cookie platters, red velvet cakes and banana cream pie since she knows it's my favorite. Mrs. Fisher always brings me a bag of tomatoes and cucumbers from her garden and when Mr. Watkins sees that my fence needs fixed, he steps in and does it free of charge. The worst part about living by elderly people however, is the fact that they love to gossip. Nothing much ever happens in Millerton so every time something actually does happen, no matter how small it is, my neighbors take pride in coming over to tell me how Jill from across town kicked her husband Jim out last week or how they think the new neighbors that moved in all the way down the street are trafficking drugs.

That's the bad part about living in a place like Millerton. The town is so small that everybody knows everybody's business. Everybody knew when Jill kicked her husband out, that Mrs. Jensen's husband suffered a stroke and that Mrs. Fisher's son was sent to rehab last month. Everybody knew what happened to me six months ago too and although I didn't want to dwell on it, it was nearly impossible to send people that showed up at my doorstep away. Truth is, I'm still dealing with it. I'm dealing with it in my own way, though and the best way for me to deal with it is to not talk about it. I just don't see the point in talking about it with people when I already spend every waking moment just thinking about it.

Mrs. Jensen's dog sniffs at a fire hydrant, kicks his leg up and goes about his business. She fashions an old, tired wave my way and politely, I wave back. I turn my attention to the filthy red jeep parked in my driveway. It's already nice outside and it's supposed to stay nice according to the weather forecast. Maybe after breakfast, I'll stand out in the driveway and wash the jeep. I've been putting off washing it for the last week just to see if it would rain but it doesn't seem like it's going to rain anytime soon so I should probably just wash it myself. That might be a fun little activity to do today. I'm always looking for ways to entertain her without sending her down to play with Mrs. Jensen's dog. Maybe she'll enjoy washing the car with me. As shamed as I am to say it, half of the time I don't know what to do with her. It's been six months and you would think that I would've adjusted by now but I haven't. I'm still relatively clueless at how to do this by myself.

"Dada?" I turn my head and look at the door. Speaking of her, she's standing in front of the door wearing a stained white t-shirt and a diaper. Her diaper is sagging which indicates that it's more than full. Her hands are against the screen and she's looking directly at me. Without a word, I stand up from the swing and walk over to the door. I still curse the day she learned how to scoot down the steps on her butt without getting scared. She used to be too afraid to go down steps so she'd stand at the top and scream for me to come get her, but ever since she learned that scooting down the steps is the way to go, she'll come seek me out no matter where in the house I am. There have been a few times where she's come into the bathroom with me, actually. I put my hand on the handle to open the door and she steps back.

"Good morning." I cup my hands under her armpits and pick her up. It's nearly impossible for me to ever be in a bad mood with her. Now, I admit that sometimes I don't know what I'm doing with her and that's frustrating, but I'm never in a bad mood with her. "What are you doing up?" I put her on my hip and take her directly upstairs so I can change her diaper. Being that she's three and a half, she's able to start preschool next year when she's four. I don't think I'm going to send her until she's five though. My biggest fear is not having her toilet trained before that. We were in the middle of teaching her how to use the potty before hell broke loose and now I don't know where to pick up with it. She puts her head on my shoulder and hugs me while I carry her back to her bedroom. She also doesn't talk much. The only thing I feel like I've done right in the last six months is take her to a specialist where I work to see if she's autistic or mentally retarded because I do know that three and a half year olds should talk more than she does. She checked out perfectly fine. She's healthy and nothing's wrong with her. The doctors said it's something called "selective mutism", where she just chooses who she wants to talk to and who she doesn't want to talk to.

I lay her down on the bed she just climbed out of and go over to the corner where I keep her pack of pull-ups. I pluck one out of the pack and walk it back over to her. She lies on the bed perfectly still as she waits for me to change her. She's actually pretty smart; she just doesn't talk. She can count to ten, she recognizes animals and their noises and she actually holds full conversations with me when I start them. I peel off her soiled diaper and put it on the floor. I put her feet through the leg holes of the pull-up and stand her up on her bed. She holds onto my shoulders for support and I pull the diaper up on her hips. I'm pretty good with kids. I work with them and I nurse them back to health and I know how to deal with them but for some reason, it's harder to deal with my own. I do know how to make her talk though. Sometimes I force her to, by asking her questions that she can't nod "yes" or shake "no" to. "Do you want pancakes or Fruity Pebbles for breakfast?" I pick her back up and grab her dirty diaper as well, so I can throw it away downstairs. "Pancakes or Fruity Pebbles?"

"Lasagna." She wraps her legs around my hip and she puts her hands on my cheeks.

"Lasagna's not a breakfast food. We can have lasagna for dinner today but not for breakfast. What do you want to eat for breakfast? Do you want me to make you a pancake or do you want a bowl of cereal and milk?" I walk downstairs with her and go straight into the kitchen. Her favorite food is lasagna and french fries. If she had the choice, she would eat lasagna and/or french fries for breakfast, lunch and dinner. For the first two or so months, I let her. I was just happy to get her to eat anything because for about two weeks after it happened, she wouldn't eat anything at all. But when she got her appetite back, she threw tantrums if the food I put in front of her wasn't either lasagna or french fries. So I gave in and let her eat lasagna, french fries and Mountain Dew for a good two months. When I finally got myself together, I realized that she needed to eat three meals a day and healthier food so although she still threw tantrums, I made her eat suitable breakfasts, lunches and dinners. I think we're beginning to understand each other. It was rough there for a little while but we're beginning to settle into a routine and it's starting to become clear that this is our new normal.

I put her down on the counter and she swings her feet. "Cereal." She puts her head down and looks at the floor. That right there is how I know that we're starting to do better with this. A few months ago, this would have been an argument. She would've insisted that I feed her lasagna for breakfast and she would've screamed and cried until I eventually gave in. Now she knows that when I say no to something, I mean it and she doesn't even test it. Both of us are adjusting to this in our own ways. "Dada, maybe we go to...the beach today?" Her voice is quiet, like she's afraid to ask. I grab a plastic bowl from the cabinet and the box of cereal from the top of the fridge. She's been asking me to go to the beach for the past week. I haven't really had time to take her with me working and stuff and plus, I hate the beach.

"Maybe." I dump some cereal into her bowl and splash a little bit of milk over it. I stir it with a spoon to make sure the milk is evenly distributed over the cereal and walk it over to the kitchen table. "Daddy actually has to wash the car today. Do you wanna help? You can hold the hose." I pick her back up again and carry her over to the table. I can tell that she's not too enthusiastic about helping me wash the car and at least I can say I tried. I thought for sure that she would be excited to help me do a big girl chore, like wash the car. I guess not. "I tell you what..." I put her down in the chair and push her bowl of cereal towards her. "If you help me wash the car, we can go to the beach for a couple hours after we're done." I don't really want to go to the beach and sit out in the hot sun but her big green eyes light up when I tell her that we can go to the beach and there's no way I can take that back now. "You gotta help me wash the car though. Deal?"

"Deal." She picks up her spoon and starts feeding herself. I stand with my back against the refrigerator and just watch her while she eats. If I had told her no to going to the beach, she would've helped me wash the car anyway. But she would've spent the rest of the night in her bedroom and I wouldn't have seen her again until dinner. For the last six months, that is basically what our life has been like. I go to work, my dad comes over to sit with her while I'm at work and she's usually asleep by the time I get home. On the weekends, she usually asks to go to the beach. I say no, she retreats to her bedroom and that's the end of that. I don't particularly care for the beach. I used to, but I don't anymore and I guess that's why I always tell her no.

Every summer, we used to go to the beach at least three times a week. We would pack up the beach towels, the shovels and the pails and we would spend hours at the beach just her, me and her mother. We would leave early in the morning and not return until 7:30 at night. And on the way home, Lyla would always pass out in the backseat of the car before we even got home. And my wife would come home and make something simple for dinner for just the two of us while I would wipe the sand off our daughter and put her in bed. I used to love the beach back then. I hate it now. We haven't been to the beach in the last six months so I don't know for sure, but part of me suspects that going to the beach now wouldn't be the same as going to the beach then. I try not to deprive Lyla of anything now that all she has is a dad and I often find myself overcompensating for the fact that she's growing up with just a dad, but the beach just isn't something I'm ready for. But like I said, I try not to deprive her of anything so even though I'm not ready to go to the beach just the two of us, I'll do it just to make her happy.

She quietly spoons another scoop of cereal into her mouth and chews with her head down. Her light brown hair is still pulled back in the lazy ponytail I had put it in before she went to bed last night and although she _seems_ happy, I can see sadness behind those green eyes of hers. She's such a good girl and I feel so bad that she's stuck with me. When I say that I overcompensate, I mean that at times, I find myself giving in just because I feel sorry for her. I know that feeding a three year old lasagna and french fries every day for two months was wrong but she's living without her mother so if lasagna and french fries made her happy, I gave them to her. And here I go, overcompensating again. "Hey Lyla..." I call her name and she puts her spoon down and looks up. "After breakfast...go put on your bathing suit. We'll head to the beach when you're done." She gasps and cracks a smile, a smile that I haven't seen in a really long time. We might as well head to the beach when she's done eating, we have nothing to lose. It's almost 10:30 in the morning and if I get her home by about 6:00, I'll still have time to wash the car.

Lyla finishes off the last bit of her cereal puts her hands against the edge of table so she can push her chair out. I hear the sound of my front door opening and I'm not at all alarmed by this because I know exactly who it is. It's another one of those things that makes a Sunday morning normal...at least for the last six months. Lyla hops down from her spot at the table and runs to the front door. "Pappy! Pappy!" It used to bother me to see how happy she gets when she sees my dad, because she never gets that happy to see me. But then I realized that part of the reason she gets happy to see my dad is because he takes up a lot of time with her. He watches her while I'm at work and they do a lot of things together, like coloring and walking to the ice cream shop across town. Once I realized that's the reason she gets happy to see him, I didn't let it bother me anymore.

My dad walks in the kitchen carrying Lyla in his arms. I pick up the bowl of milk she left on the table and take it to the sink to dump it out. "Hey dad." I run some water in the bowl that the milk was in and leave it in the sink to wash for later. Ever since it happened, I've been trying my best to find some sort of routine. Before it happened, we had settled in to a very specific routine. We'd get up every morning, Jenna would have breakfast waiting for me and Lyla when we woke up, we'd put some clothes on and find something to do for the rest of the day. When I had to work, Jenna would stay home with Lyla and the two of them would do fun stuff while I was away. And that would be our daily thing. It was the only thing we could count on from day to day—that everything would be the same no matter what happened. Since it happened, I've been trying to put the pieces of our lives together to build another routine and I've been struggling. The only thing that's constant is my dad watching her while I work. "You came at a bad time...we're about to go the beach."

"You're finally taking her to the beach?" He lifts Lyla up and puts her on his shoulders. For being 62, my dad's pretty young. He likes to go jogging and exercising down at the gym. He never used to be this active and he claims it's because he wanted to get in shape so he can be a better grandfather to Lyla but I suspect that his recent fitness addiction stems from the fact that my mom's got younger man. The two of them have been divorced for 10 years but it's no secret that my dad misses her. He makes it a point to deny the fact that he misses her but I know for sure he does. My mom's 60 years old and she's dating a 45 year old and I find it mighty funny how my dad all of a sudden wants to be physically fit as soon as my mom gets a younger man. "Good...'cause I was going to take her tomorrow while you were at work. You saved me a trip."

"There's nothing else better to do, so we might as well." I go over to him and hold my hands out for Lyla. "Give her here...I'm gonna go put her bathing suit on her." He takes her off his shoulders and passes her off to me. I wish I knew how to connect with my daughter better. I would give anything to have her run to me with a smile and open arms like she does with my dad and much the way she used to do with Jenna. The reality is...when Jenna was still here, Lyla and I just coexisted. Of course I love her and I assume she loves me too but I was just her dad and she was just my daughter when her mother was still around. She had the most incredible bond with Jenna and I don't know how to mimic that bond without trying to take her place. I don't want her to feel as if I'm trying to replace her mom. "Which bathing suit do you want to wear? You want to wear your pink one or your purple one?"

"I wear the pink." She stares at my dad and scratches her head. "...Pappy come?"

"If Pappy wants to..." I look at my dad to see if I can figure out if it's a yes or no for him to come. My dad hates breaking Lyla's heart so oftentimes, he'll have me make up some sort of excuse as to why he can't do what she wants him to do because he won't tell her. A lot of times I have to read my dad's face and see if it's a yes or a no. and this time, his face is clearly a no. "Go find your bathing suit and I'll be up in a second to put it on. Daddy has to talk to Pappy about something." I bend down to the floor and let her off my hip. Without any arguments, she excitedly runs to the steps to grab her bathing suit. "What's up, dad? You don't wanna come?"

"Nah, that's not it." He walks over to the window next to my stove and looks out it. "Just don't feel like sitting out in the sun today. You know what the heat does to my knees sometimes." No matter how young he tries to be, nothing will change the fact that my dad _is_ a whopping 62 years old and he has arthritis in his knees. Heat and rain mess with his knees sometimes, he claims. "I actually came because I heard that the YMCA is having some sort of summer party for children today and tomorrow. I was gonna see if Lyla wanted to go but since you're taking her off to the beach, I guess I'll just go on home and find something on TV to watch."

"Dad, if you want to take her..." I hate to feel like I just put a damper on his Sunday plans. My dad tries to pretend like he comes over and takes Lyla off my hands just to help me out but I know deep down that he takes her because he enjoys spending time with her. "I mean...I'm off again on Wednesday. I can just take her to the beach then..."

"No, no." He clears his throat. "I'm actually looking forward to spending time in my underwear on my couch today. They're having the party for two days. I'll just take her tomorrow...it'll be good to get her out the house. She shouldn't sit up in her room all the time like that, you know. Kids need friends and fresh air to run around in play in. You know that, don't you?" I just lean against the counter and say nothing. "Sometimes I wonder about you, Alex. I wonder how you can be a Pediatrician and stuff...and be so clueless when it comes to your own kid." I have half a mind to say something smart to him about what he just said but he's right, actually. I'm a Pediatrician—Pediatric surgeon to be specific—and I'm great at taking care of everyone's sick kids but when it comes to taking care of my own healthy one, I don't know the first thing about it. "I didn't mean to make you feel bad. You should just...you know, take her to the park or something. You don't have to keep her cooped up in the house."

I take a breath and exhale. "I know." I start tracing the granite tiles that make up the countertop. "Still just...adjusting, I guess." I murmur.

"It's been six months, Alex. When are you going to stop living in the past and start living in the future? I know it's...hard and all, to do it alone but you really think Jenna would want you to go on like this? I thought you two discussed a plan." He still looks out the window as if something out there has really caught his attention but I know better and I know that the only reason he's looking out there is because he hates making eye contact when talking about a serious situation. That's at least one day that my dad and I are alike. I avoid eye contact at all costs when it comes to talking about things that are serious as well. "I thought you two talked about what you're going to do."

"We did." I shrug and mindlessly sketch my name invisibly on the countertop. "I just always figured that I had time. You know dad, just because we discussed it doesn't mean I was ready for it. Things don't always go as planned." I sigh. That's for damn sure. I didn't plan on being 30 years old and alone. I didn't plan on losing my wife when she was 30 too. I didn't plan on raising my daughter by myself. And yeah, Jenna and I had several discussions about this and he had a solid plan of what I was supposed to do. Doesn't mean that I was ready for it and damn sure doesn't make it any easier. "I should go get Lyla ready..." I take another breath to clear my thoughts before I have to go deal with my daughter.

"I'm gonna head on home." He finally stops blankly staring out the window and stands straight up. "Tell baby girl that I had to do something back at home and I couldn't come to the beach today. Tell her I'll see her tomorrow." I nod my head and he stands in the middle of the kitchen like he's about to say something. Another thing about my dad is that he's not afraid to get dirty. He's a pretty hands-on kind of guy and he likes to do odd jobs, like paint the outside of his house and work on cars. Any normal person would be able to tell from the grease-stained blue jeans he wears and the heavy, clunky combat boots. His usual getup is a crisp white t-shirt, a ball cap and it wouldn't be my dad without the dirt underneath his fingernails. I guess he was working on a car before he walked over here. He walks everywhere. He lives on the other side of Millerton and he insists on walking everywhere, even though he has a red pickup truck. "Call me if you need anything, son." He puts his hands in the pockets of his blue jeans and continues to look around. "And I mean that."

"Alright...see you later dad."

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 **A/N:** So I closed voting officially this morning  & it ended with prompt 1 having 11 votes, prompt 2 having 9 and prompt three having 10. I included votes from on here and votes from my tumblr inbox. Please don't be too mad if your prompt didn't get chosen. When I have good prompts like these three, I shelf them and I will go back to them later. So don't be surprised if after this story is over, you see me write the prompt you voted for.

So with that being said, this story is prompt number 1. I know some of you read my tumblr stories as well and if you do, you've noticed that Alex's daughter is named Lyla, like the little girl in my tumblr stories. There is no similarity between this universe and the tumblr universes. I just chose to name her Lyla because I could connect with her better, since I'm already familiar with writing her character. I hope you guys like this story. I have it planned to be a pretty good one. This story is meant to be Alex-centric and I'm going to try and keep it that way as best as I possibly can.

Bear with me through the boring first chapter. You guys know I like to introduce the universe before I start with the real stuff.

Oh, and this is slightly AU. More AU on Jo's part of the story, but you'll see that soon.


	2. Looks

When my feet touch down on the soft fuzziness that is my brown bedside rug, the bones in the lower half of my body shift and crack like I'm more than thrice my age. I can actually hear my joints pop out of place then pop themselves back in. I don't even wince this time around though; I'm used to feeling like I'm an elderly woman. I use the backs of my hands and rub my still-tired eyes while I stifle a wide, drawn out yawn. Without even attempting to move the curtain of my long, brunette hair out of the way, my feet wander three inches to the right and I slip them inside my purple plush house slippers. I stand up and lean backwards to further stretch my body out and the stiffness in my tailbone is enough to make me cringe. I get that familiar dizzy spell I always get after I stretch and sit back down on the bed to wait it out. I'm always sore and achy but I find that the stiffness in my body tends to get worse when I'm lying dormant for long periods of time. I suppose I could start using my braces again if it gets too bad for me to deal with it.

I stand back up again and make my way to the door of my bedroom. Before I leave out of my room, I glance quickly at the calendar hanging on my wall and try my damnedest to figure out today's date. I stopped keeping track of the date a while ago because time made me sad and my doctor advised me to do away with the things that make me sad. I realize she didn't mean that I should do away with something as essential as time but I took her advice literally. The only remnant of time I have left in this house is the small calendar hanging on my wall that I got from the bank downtown. I have my cell phone too but I've become accustomed to not looking at the time on my cell phone when I unlock it. I used to do it on purpose—ignore the large display of the date and time on the home screen of my phone. I used to do it on purpose but the more I did it, the more it's become a habit and now it's just habitual that I don't pay attention to it. I scroll across the top of the calendar with my fingertip to find what could possibly be the date. It's crucial for me to know the date for today at least because the mortgage is past due and they're giving me a week past the due date to pay it before they foreclose the house.

I thought I cared if the house got foreclosed or not but now I'm not so sure. When the real estate agent came knocking on the door last week and threatened to foreclose the house, I shut the door in her face and retreated back to my bedroom, where I wept quietly at the thought of losing my home. But today, I'm not sure that I care anymore. It's just a house...a house that holds more bad memories than it does good. They can go ahead and foreclose the house. I'll find somewhere else to live. Somewhere cheaper—not somewhere that costs $630 a month to live in. Somewhere without three extra bedrooms that I don't need and two additional bathrooms that I don't use. I'll find me a place with one lousy bedroom and one lousy bathroom.

I decide that it must be somewhere between May 28th and June 1st, I'm not sure which one. So I decide that the date is May 30th and I'm three days late on the mortgage payment. I can't find it within my body to care though. I used to care about a lot of things that I just don't care about anymore. Like whether or not the bills got paid, what I looked like when I went out in public and if I got out of bed on a daily basis or not. Those things all seem so minuscule now; as they've been added to the growing list of things I could currently give a damn about. I stumble on my sore legs and make my way to the staircase. Steps are a hassle for me, so I make that a mental note for my new place. When I finally let this place go to hell, my new, cheaper house is going to have everything on one floor; I swear to it. I wrap my entire hand around the railing for support and grit my teeth together as I carefully take one step at a time. If I had never stopped going to physical therapy, I would be able to conquer the steps with very little pain. But if I don't even have enough to make my mortgage payment, how the hell would I afford to continue with physical therapy and rehabilitation?

I make it to the bottom of the steps and head straight for the refrigerator. Since my hips are throbbing from the steps, I hold onto the counter for support as I open up the fridge. I know that the pain is temporary. It's always horrible when I just wake up and it's even worse when I take the steps after just waking up. I think my body just has to get some blood flowing through it because by noon, I will have forgotten all about the pain in my lower half until next morning, when I wake up again. I grab the only thing on the shelf of the fridge—a carton of orange juice. I unscrew the cap off the top and put my lips on the spittle. I upturn it and guzzle the last little bit clean out of the container. I toss the empty carton in the trash compactor and look around for something I can make myself for breakfast. I'm not particularly hungry right now but I need to eat something before I take an Aspirin for my hips. The cupboards are all cleaned out and the only thing I have to eat is bread and butter, so toast it is. I shove two pieces of bread in the toaster and push the button down.

I remember just a few short months ago, I would wake up every morning to elaborate breakfasts of french toast with powdered sugar and fruit salad, lunches of the biggest, juiciest chicken sandwiches and green tea and dinners that had all three courses, including dessert and appetizers. I really wish I didn't have to fire Kathy. She made the best, finger-licking meals I've ever tasted in my entire life. I could go for one of her sausage omelets right now. I'm a terrible cook myself, so Kathy was pretty useful when she was here. I can't cook much of anything but I can follow a recipe. If you give me a recipe, I'll cook it and it'll turn out edible. But the simple things that I should be able to make without a recipe, like spaghetti and simple pancakes, I screw up. My toast pops up out of the toaster and I stick it on the counter instead of walking to the second part of the kitchen and grabbing a saucer. I smear the stick of butter across the pieces of bread and take a lousy bite. I chew a few times, swallow and take another bite of toast.

Once I decide that I'm done, I sweep the crumbs off the counter and onto the floor. I often catch myself doing that because I still find myself thinking that Rachel will be around at noon to clean up the house. And when I remember that I had to fire Rachel too, a very small part of me gets sad. I don't really get sad because I miss Rachel, I get sad because I'm also somewhat of a slob. I'm not disgusting or filthy and I shower every single day. I'm just really bad with leaving my dinner plates lying around and leaving my clothes strewn across one end of the room to the other. I don't always remember to clean my hair out of the bathroom drain and I don't wipe my toothpaste out of the sink after I spit. But I'm not some disgusting pig that'll sit in my own filth for days. I'm just used to having someone else clean up after me, I guess. I throw the piece of uneaten toast in the trash compactor too and head back for the stairs.

Going up the stairs hurts a hell of a lot worse than going down the stairs. So I squeeze the railing again and pull myself up with each step I take. When I make it to the top of the steps, I rest my forehead against the wall and take a few breaths to bear with the pain in my hip joints. I really wish I had enough to continue with my physical therapy and rehab. That part is not on my list of things I don't care about. When I'm okay enough to walk again, I let go of the railing and go back to my bedroom. I open up my sock drawer and rummage through it for the sock that I keep my savings in. I take out the wad of cash I have in the sock and count out a hundred bucks to go food shopping. I wasn't going to go food shopping because once this house goes under, everything in this house doesn't belong to me anymore and that's including the fridge. But dammit, I'm hungry and I'm not totally sure when the house is going to be foreclosed. I might starve by then. I toss the hundred bucks on my bed and open up the door next to my walk-in closet that leads to the master bathroom.

I flick the light switch and stand in front of the toilet, mentally preparing myself for how badly this is about to hurt to squat and sit down on the toilet. I pull my underwear down and sit on the toilet, despite my pain. I gaze down at my knees while I release my bladder and trace the long, S-shaped scar that starts at my knee and snakes all the way up my thigh. I used to love my body. I'm not vain or cocky, that's just the way it was. I'm skinny and quite petite but somehow, I still have those womanly curves. I don't have big boobs but they fit my figure and my butt is decent. I have a model-type body. I'm not very tall but my legs are long and smooth—well, they used to be. Anyway, I used to love my body. I can't really say that anymore. Now when I look in the mirror, all I can see are these scars. These nasty, bright pink marks all over my body that are shameful reminders of things I'd give any of my internal organs to forget. I stand up from the toilet and wipe myself but before I pull my panties back up, I catch a glimpse of my bare legs in the full-length body mirror next to the bathtub.

The scars have faded and they're not as noticeable as they used to be but they're on my body, so of course they're all I can see. Scars on both my knees and on my left leg, one long one that runs down from my waistline to my kneecap. From my waist up, I look as I've always looked. Tanned white skin with flecks of brown freckles here and there, skinny torso and unruly brown hair that comes to the middle of my back. But from my waist down, I'm hideous. I will say that the way I look on the outside in no way is as horrible as I feel on the inside. I feel ten times worse than I look. I pull my underwear up and leave out of the bathroom. I head to the walk-in closet and busily search around for something suitable to wear. Although I'm not 100% sure of the date, I am sure that it's somewhere between late spring and early summer so a pair of shorts will suffice. I grab a pair from the basket on the floor of the closet and put them on.

I take a shirt out of the basket too and take off the one I'm currently wearing. I pop the new shirt over my head and pull my hair out of the back. I slide on a pair of sandals and grab my cell phone, along with the hundred bucks I put on the bed. I start to walk out of the bedroom but I stop dead in my tracks when I think about something. One day last week, I was talking to my neighbor, Mrs. Robinson. And she was telling me about how her daughter's house had gone under foreclosure once. She told me that the real estate agency can come at any time and put a lock on your house when they're threatening to put it up for foreclosure. With that little piece of knowledge, I retreat back to my sock drawer and I grab the entire sock that I keep my money in. I hope my house is still my house when I come back from the grocery store.

But in case it's not, at least I have a little bit of cash on me and everything I care about in my cell phone.

* * *

"Is that all, honey?" The cashier rings up my box of Ramen Noodles lastly and looks at me. She has round, black tortoise-shell glasses on and her hair is a light blonde color with grey hair seeping through her roots. She's looking at me with that look of pure pity that everyone around here gives me. I hate that look with everything in my body. I don't need everyone's pity. I'm just a person buying something at the grocery store or pumping my gas at a gas station. I'm not some pitiful charity case that everyone needs to feel sorry for. I nod my head to avoid cursing her out because she seems like a very nice woman. If I open my mouth to say anything to her, I'm afraid of what I might say. I might yell at her and tell her to stop looking at me like that. So just to be safe, I nod my head and hand her two twenty dollar bills that should cover my groceries. I decided to buy simple things instead of stocking up the fridge to be safe with the house going up for foreclosure and all. I bought a box of Ramen Noodles, a couple small bottles of soda pop, a few bags of chips and lunch meat to make sandwiches. I just don't want to take a chance loading up my fridge with a bunch of food because then I would've wasted money.

The cashier rings me up and finishes bagging my groceries for me. When she hands me my change, she's still giving me that look. Instead of getting annoyed by it, I decide that I'd rather her give me the look of pity than the look of disgust and I take my change from her with a polite smile. Around here, I get one of two looks. I either get the look of pity—like they're watching a fragile puppy starve to death. Or I get looked at like I'm a pesky, ditty, good-for-nothing fly that's menacing everyone around me. I hate the fact that everyone around here knows me. I hate the fact that everyone around here passes judgment before they even take the chance to REALLY know me. The judgments they make about me are based off newspaper clippings and television newscasts. "You take care now." The cashier nods at me as if she's giving me some sort of blessing and puts her head down.

The only person around here that has taken the chance to hear my side of this is my neighbor, Mrs. Robinson. She's more of a mother-figure to me than a neighbor. Not that I don't have my own mother because I do and she's still alive and well, the last time I checked. But Mrs. Robinson is around me and she's always offering me the kind of guidance my real mom would offer. My real mom still lives up in New Jersey, where I grew up at. She calls me and checks in with me every so often but she's a firm believer in letting me have my own life and I sort of like that about her. My mom is rather...eccentric. She's a high school Chemistry teacher and I'm a firm believer that you have to be a little bit off-the-wall to like Chemistry enough to teach it. But not only is she strange because of that, she's strange in a sense that she's sort of a tree-hugging, dirt-worshipper that is always talking about "the good of the environment". She used to make my baby food and I grew up eating all organic everything. The only eggs I ever ate were cage-free and I didn't have my first batch of McDonald's french fries until I was ten years old. She was always more friendly to me than motherly but I always knew to respect her because she'd whack me in the mouth if I ever got out of line. She was friendly but she never let me forget that she was my mother first. For as long as I can remember, it's always been just me and my mother. I'm an only child and she's a single mother since my dad walked off when I was little. But she always told me that it was better that way because she didn't have to share me with anybody. She was over the moon when I graduated from Princeton up there in New Jersey because since she was a teacher herself, she always groomed me to be the smartest I could be. But she was heartbroken when I told her that I wanted to move down here to Massachusetts to get my teaching certificate from Harvard. She was happy that I wanted to be a teacher too, but sad that I was so far away. She always raised me to be independent and eventually, she warmed up to the idea of me starting my own life and at first, she called to check in twice a day but as she got more comfortable with it, she stopped.

Anyway, the only person around here that looks at me like I'm a regular person is Mrs. Robinson. To her, I'm just Jo. I'm not that horrible person that the media painted me to me in the newspapers and on the news and stuff. It means a lot to me that I'm simply just Jo to Mrs. Robinson because I need to be Jo to somebody. At times, I'm not even Jo to myself. Sometimes I find myself believing that I am that horrible person that everyone around Chamberlain thinks I am. And every time I look at myself in the mirror and see the nasty scars on my legs, I'm just reminded why I can't go out in public without people thinking negatively of me. Before my insurance lapsed, I had a doctor. A doctor that told me once a week that I wasn't a bad person, just a person that made a poor decision that had serious consequences. I miss hearing that doctor tell me that...because I don't think anybody has any idea how much I need to hear that sometimes.

It happened six months ago and I guess maybe I was just a little bit foolish to think that everyone would've forgotten by now. It took me two months after it happened to even be able to bring myself out of the house. I remember the first place I went was to the Texaco station for a bottle of Aspirin, since it was closer than the CVS. I walked in there and walked right back out after the worker told me "she didn't serve murderers." I went back home and stayed in the house, in pain for another two months. I remember how low I felt after that. And I'd rather sit in my house in pain until the end of time than feel that low again. The thing that people don't think about when they judge me is that I loved him. If only they thought about the pain—and I'm not just talking physical pain—I've gone through in the last six months, maybe they wouldn't be so quick to make me feel so lousy. I just want to forget all about what happened. I want to move on, put it behind me and never speak about it again. But that's nearly impossible to do when I live in a place like Chamberlain.

I keep my head down when I leave the grocery store because I don't want to see all the stares, eye rolls and head shakes I'm probably getting. My grocery bags flop meaninglessly at my sides as I walk through the parking lot to get back to the car. It took me two months to get behind the wheel without having a panic attack after it happened and another three months after the Texaco incident. I'm still not completely comfortable with being behind the wheel of the car but I had to fire Fred the chauffeur, along with Rachel and Kathy because I couldn't afford to pay them. Without Fred, I'm forced to drive everywhere I want to go, which isn't much of anywhere. I prefer to stay in the house, far away from the comments of the general public because no one, and I do mean no one, has anything nice to say about me.

I carefully pull out of the parking slot I was in and turn my wheel straight. I slowly put my foot on the gas until I'm comfortable with the speed and once I am, I drive out of the parking lot of the grocery store and work quickly on my way home. I wish I had someone that could go out and run all my errands for me. Someone that doesn't have a target on their back. Someone that is actually liked around here. Or better yet, I wish the people around here had at least a little sympathy for me. But when you were married to the mayor of a city like Chamberlain...a man that was handsome, wealthy and so well liked by everyone...well, you get limited pity and absolutely no sympathy from anyone; especially when you're the reason he's dead now.

Before I know it, I'm back on the street of my house; my mansion; the place I once lived with my husband. It's a magnificent place, really it is. Three stories high, six bedrooms and five bathrooms, pool in the back, gym down in the basement, completely fenced in with a garage that's big enough to comfortably fit three cars. The house is a direct reflection of everything that Mark stood for. Wealth, competence, strength and everything that's good in the world. Somehow after he died, I inherited the house but not his fortune—his parents made sure of that. They're still none to pleased about the fact that their son's murderer is still living in the mansion he had built from the ground-up with his money. If it were up to them, I would've been kicked out of the house the day I was well enough to come home from the hospital. In his will, Mark left everything to me. The house, the money, the cars, his place as mayor and councilman of the city...everything was left to me. And I got to keep most of the stuff but his parents made sure I didn't get to see a red cent of any of his money.

I don't think they knew Mark like I knew him. The Mark I knew would've wanted me to be taken care of. He wouldn't want me to be facing homelessness and he would be devastated to know that the house he worked so hard to build for us is about to go under foreclosure. I get that his parents want someone to blame for their son being dead though...and well, I just to happen to be the one that's to blame. Truth be told, I'd want me to suffer to. If I were the reason my handsome, brilliant, wealthy son was dead, I'd want me to suffer too. I just wish his parents knew how much I loved him because I don't think they do. Hell, I don't think the town of Chamberlain knows how sorry I am and how much I loved that man. I drive through the gates and park the car in the garage. When I walk out of the garage to go in the house through the front door, I'm stopped by Mrs. Robinson.

"Jo, honey! Come here!" She's standing in her front lawn, eagerly waving at me to come join her. She's holding what looks like a magazine in one hand and a garden shovel in the other. She's waving at me with the magazine-occupied hand. I put my grocery bags down on the front porch and lightly jog across the street and over to her house. I took an Aspirin before I left to go to the store earlier and I have absolutely no pain in my legs right now. It's a shame how I eat Aspirin like it's candy. Mrs. Robinson is wearing her gardening jeans, a loose t-shirt, a pair of rundown tennis shoes and a hat to block off the sunlight. Her chocolate brown skin is glistening from a thin layer of sweat. "I thought I saw you leave this morning. Where'd you run off to?"

"I just went down to the store to grab some groceries." I lean against her green picket fence and take in the stuffy humid air. I like warm weather; it always puts me in a good mood. "Why, what's wrong?"

"I was just wondering if you left me for good." She wipes a bead of sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. "I have a bag of apples and oranges in my crisper. Would you like a few?" Mrs. Robinson knows my entire situation. She knows about me losing the house, she knows that I can hardly afford to do anything and she knows that I'm struggling with the decision of whether I should fill my fridge up or just wait for them to take the house away. She invites me over for dinner sometimes, just to make sure I eat and to help spare my decision. "And I've got a pot roast thawing out for dinner tonight. You're welcome to come over, say around 6:00?"

"I'll be here." I smile to thank her and turn to leave and get my groceries off the porch. I used to say "thank you" to her all the time but she doesn't like it when I thank her so I've stopped.

"Oh, and Jo..." She calls out to me and I turn back around. "How was it at the grocery store? Anybody...you know?"

"Just the usual, 'you poor thing' kind of look." I tuck my hair behind my ears and nervously look down at the ground. I concentrate on an ant that's making his way across a crack in the sidewalk to avoid letting tears fall. "...I guess I'd rather get that look than the other one...you know, the one where they look at me like I'm scum?" My eyes have welled up with tears. My mom and Mrs. Robinson are the only two people on this planet that I will freely cry in front of. "I'd rather them give me the pity look any day."

She takes a deep breath and sighs. "You just wait, doll. It's still news. Just wait for the next drug bust to happen across town or for Billy Jo from downtown to cuss out the lady at the hair salon." She puts her hand underneath my chin and strokes my cheek, which makes me smile through the fact that I want to cry. "Now I'll see you back around here at 6:00 on the dot, not a moment later, yes?"

I nod my head. "I'll see you."


	3. Enough Conversation

The sun beats down on the back of my neck, sending a bead of sweat rolling down my forehead. I swipe it away with my palm and bury my hand back in the sizzling hot sand. The sand is burning hot but it's cooler to have my hands and feet buried in it, that's how hot of a day it turned out to be. I slide back so my butt is fully on the orange towel I laid down and I gaze out into the beautiful blue ocean water. Some people find it scary how the ocean seems to go on forever when you look out into the horizon but I think that's part of what makes the ocean so mystifying. It's a crazy thought when I think about the world beyond what that horizon doesn't show. It looks as if the Earth drops off clean at the end of that ocean but I know that it doesn't and that's truly something to think about. Busy chatter and boisterous laughter fills the air around me and the solemn squawking of the seagulls flying overhead is a pleasant background noise. Out in the waters too deep for anything but boats to be exploring into, gigantic waves are starting and by the time they make it to the shore, they break and gently roll up just inches away from where my feet are resting. The tide sloshes up a piece of seaweed and drags it back down gently.

I turn my head and look to the left of me, just to make sure she's still doing okay. Lyla is sitting right next to me with a mound of sand on her lap and her tiny toes sticking out the bottom. She's senselessly sucking on a yellow pacifier and concentrating on weaving her red shovel in and out of the sand mound on her lap. I know that parents are supposed to do away with pacifiers once the child has a mouthful of teeth but the pacifier is comforting to her and I'm in no position to take that away. Jenna was doing really well with weaning her off the pacifier but of course, I didn't quite know how to keep up with it and she's back to being hooked on it now. She scoops some sand up with her shovel and adds it to the pile on her lap. She doesn't know that I'm watching her so intently. Her hand comes up to her face and she takes out her pacifier. I watch as she gathers a handful of sand and heads straight for her mouth with it. "No, Lyla." I smack the sand out of her hand and she looks at me like she doesn't realize she was doing anything wrong. "That's cucka. You don't want that." I sweep her hand clean of sand and shove her pacifier back in her mouth instead. "You don't want to eat the sand. It's no good."

She picks her shovel back up and starts adding more sand to her pile again. I rest my arms on my knees since my legs are bent and I'm tall enough to comfortably do so. We've been here for an hour, I think. We've been here for a while and all she's done so far is sit here quietly and dig around in the sand. Her trying to eat it is the only thing action-packed that she's done. She couldn't have wanted to come to the beach just to sit here and dig in the sand. I look at her again and this time, she's sprinkling a handful of sand on her toes. "...You wanna go in the water?" She looks at me when I ask her that and her pacifier stops bobbing. "Come on...I'll take you." Immediately, she drops her shovel and the handful of sand and holds her arms out for me to pick her up. I pick myself up off the towel I've spent the last hour sitting on and pull my black wife-beater off. I didn't plan on taking this off but I fold it up and put it on the towel anyway. I pick Lyla up off the ground and send the mountain of sand she had on her lap tumbling to the ground.

I'm not good at this single dad thing just yet and playing both her mother and her father is challenging in itself. Before I got in the car to drive here, I tried to put myself in Jenna's mindset. I tried to pack our beach bag the way I thought Jenna would pack it and so I packed an extra swimming diaper, three towels, her shovel and pail and sunblock. I thought I had everything I needed...but I forgot her damn floaties. I never knew just how much I depended on Jenna to take care of her until she was gone. Now I don't even have her around to ask questions. I can't help but think she'd be disappointed in the lack of bond I have with our daughter and how sorry I actually am at being a dad. My mom once told me that if a perfect stranger were to walk in my house, they would think that I didn't even love my daughter—and that's totally not true. I love her with all my heart...I just don't know how to relate to the kid. Once we get to the shallow shore, I put Lyla down and let her get her toes wet to see how she likes the water. The water is warm today. She looks down and wiggles her toes in the wet sand. I don't hear her complaining, so I hold her hand nice and tight and lead her deeper into the water.

A small wave breaks over her little body and while one of her arms is occupied by holding my hand, she brings her other arm around and hooks it around my leg. She's shivering and I'm not sure if it's because she's cold or if it's because she's scared at the fact that a wave can be taller than she is. "It's alright. It's just water." I look down at her and she looks away from me. She rests her head against my leg and holds me tight. In the water directly in front of us, two women that appear to be around my age are staring and saying "awww" at how cute the sight of my daughter hanging on to my leg is. No matter where I take her, someone almost always comments on how beautiful she is. Lyla doesn't get called "cute" very often, she gets called "beautiful" more than anything. She is rather beautiful, if I do say so myself. Her hair is light brown, half a shade away from actually being considered blonde and her eyes are green, but they're not the usual green. They're a perfect mixture of a very light green and a light brown. They could even be mistaken as blue in some lighting. She doesn't get called cute because she's not cute as much as she's pretty. Jenna used to love getting compliments on her appearance and that's one way we're different because I could care less. I already know she's a pretty little girl and I don't really need people to tell me that. "You want to get out?" She shakes her head. "You want me to pick you up?"

She hesitantly releases my leg and toddles backward a little bit before she holds her arms up again. I pick her up once more and she wraps her legs around my hip. I take her further into the water and let a couple waves break over us. She puts one of her hands out to touch a wave as it breaks and when it splashes her, she looks at me and smiles through her pacifier. "I told you it was just water...that's fun, isn't it?" I walk further into the water and take her off my hip. Her hands are holding onto my arms so tightly that her fingernails are starting to leave indentations. "I'm not going to drop you. I promise I'm not going to drop you." I hold onto her body around her torso firmly and hold her outwards so the water can hit her. The water hits her legs and she finally cracks a bigger smile, which actually makes me smile too. She hasn't been smiling much since her mother died and while I don't actually blame her for not having a reason to smile, I admit that I missed her smile quite a bit. I put her down in the deeper end of the water and hold onto her hand with my life. "When a wave comes, we have to jump okay? So when I tell you to jump...you have to jump." She squeezes my hand and nods her head. "Jump!" I don't have to jump since I'm tall enough to let the wave break over me but she jumps and the water hits her in her chest and her neck and she keeps jumping.

"Daddy, this is fun!" She's jumping up and down with the brightest smile on her face so I take her pacifier out of her mouth so she doesn't lose it. For the first time in a long time, I actually feel like I have some common ground with my daughter. She's laughing and smiling, I'm laughing and smiling and it's a good feeling to know that I'm actually doing something that she's having fun with. I've tried countless times to make things fun for her the way Jenna used to but I'm rather bad at it. Like once, I tried to play Barbie dolls with her and we had a tea party but I don't think she had fun with it. "Daddy, I jumping! I jumping!" She's holding my hand but she's jumping up and down like a rabbit and squealing with delight. "Daddy, watch this!" She lets my hand go and briefly, a wave of panic washes over my body but it goes away as I see that she's still standing close. "Watch this!" She holds her nose shut with her thumb and index finger and squats down so her face is all the way underwater. She stays under for about four seconds before she pops back up. "Ta-da!"

"Wow." I grab her hand and help her stand back up. "How did you do that? I can't even stay under that long. You have really strong lungs, girl. Real strong." I can always tell when Lyla is thinking about me and only me whenever we're in public because she starts talking. Back when we were sitting on the sand, she was real shy and concerned about the fact that there were a lot of people around us but now, she's talking a whole lot more and focusing on it only being the two of us having fun right now. This talking thing would change if someone came over and said hi or something. "Can you teach daddy how to hold his breath like that?" I hold both of her hands and swing her around by them, which makes her laugh all over again. I should probably get her something to eat. "What do you say we go get something to eat?" I hoist her up and put her on my shoulders and she rests her hands on top of my head. "You wanna see if they got any hot dogs? And maybe some ice cream?"

"Can I have a hangibber?" Her hands are lightly tapping the crown of my head and I'm holding onto her feet. "I don't want a hot dog, daddy...can I have a hangibber 'stead?"

"Yeah, I'll get you a hamburger." I walk back to our beach towel on the shore and grab her arms to take her off my shoulders. I'm guessing she forgot all about my lasagna promise. I'll ask my dad to make her lasagna for dinner tomorrow because even though she clearly forgot that I promised her lasagna, I didn't forget and on the off chance that she remembers between now and tomorrow that I promised her lasagna, I don't want her to think that her daddy makes promises and never sticks to them. I kneel down and rummage through the navy blue and white striped beach bag that I packed for my wallet. I stick my wallet in the pocket of my wet swimming trunks and stand back up. "Come on, Lyla." I drape a towel over my shoulder and hold my hand out for her to take it but she doesn't. "Lyla, I said come on...come on."

"...Uppy." She holds her arms up to me but her head is turned and she's looking at the fact that there's a bunch of people around again. I don't really know how to break her out of this shyness that she has about her but I don't want her to feel nervous, so I pick her up anyway. She starts twisting her index finger through a lock of my wavy hair. She likes to play with my hair and my ears for comfort. She used to lay on Jenna's lap and rub either her hair or her ear until she fell asleep and I've noticed that she often does it when she's scared or nervous. I've been learning a lot about my daughter in the last six months. I learn something new about her every day. "Daddy, I pee peed. I pee peed in the pool."

"Yeah?" I carry her towards the tiki building so we can get something to eat in the cafeteria. "Everybody in there probably peed too, you're not the only one." I take the towel I put over my shoulder and wrap it around her body instead because I'm pretty sure I felt her shiver a little bit against my chest. I pull open the door to the tiki bar and put my hand against her back so she can stay calm. There are a lot of people in here eating right now and I don't want her to worry. I stand in line behind a teenage boy and take my wallet out of my pocket so I have it ready when it's time to pay. Lyla is still looking around at everyone but me and I can tell that she's scoping out the scene. "Lyla..." I tap her leg to get her attention and she looks at me. I don't want her looking around and making herself nervous so if I can keep her attention, that'd be great. "You hear what song's playing?" She nods her head. "Sing it. Sing it. Say, 'there she was just a-walkin' down the street singin'..." I try to keep her engaged here.

I worry about Lyla getting herself too worked up because I know what happens when she does work herself up. She'll cry so hard that she'll gag herself and eventually, she'll throw up. I remember the last time I witnessed Lyla freak out over having too many people around her. The last time I saw Lyla freak out over having too many people around her was the day of Jenna's funeral, when everyone was bringing over platters of food and offering their condolences. I had a house of about 30 or 40 people and Lyla shut herself in Jenna's closet and didn't come out for six hours. Every time I went in there to get her, she would scream and kick at me and tell me to leave her alone. It took six hours for her to cry herself to sleep and when I went in the closet to get her, I found her cuddled up with Jenna's shoe. I think part of the reason she gets so anxious and nervous when there's a lot of people around her is because it reminds her of that day.

"Doo wah diddy diddy dum diddy doo." She swings her legs and giddily picks up the song where I left it off. Singing with her to keep her mind off the fact that there are a lot of people around seems to be working pretty well. Since the boy in front of us got his food already, I move up in the line and look at the menu. I'll get her a hamburger and some french fries and an apple juice. And for myself, I'll get a hamburger too and a corn dog, instead of french fries and a Pepsi. "Daddy, I want shockalit ice cream. And sprinkles. Can I get sprinkles?" She avoids eye contact with the lady that's taking our order.

"You can get whatever you want...but no ice cream until after you eat your real food." I rub her back in a circle just to let her know that I've still got her and as long as I've got her, I won't let anything happen to her. It works because once I rub her back, she goes ahead and looks the woman in her eye. "We'll have...a hamburger and french fries...a corn dog, another hamburger and apple juice and a Pepsi, please." The woman behind the counter is taking my order but I can tell that she's not focused. She's looking at me like every young woman in/around Millerton looks at me. Everyone in and around Millterton knows that my wife died and I'm newly single and because everyone knows that, I can't understand why people would think that it's okay to look at me the way a bunch of young women look at me. I don't really have the heart to tell the girls that I'm not interested in dating; not now, not ever. Then again, I don't feel like I should have to tell them that I'm not interested. They should automatically know, considering the fact that my wife just died six months ago.

"That'll be $23.27, sir." She gives me a flirtatious half-smile and just to be polite, I give her a smirk before I sift through my wallet for a twenty dollar bill and a five. She has a nameplate on her black button-down Polo shirt that says, "Emily." She has bright red hair with brown highlights in it and blonde lowlights. She's tall and her brown eyes fit her face, which has high cheekbones and a thin nose. I hand her thirty dollars and wait for my change. I shove the change into my wallet and slip it back in my pocket. Emily looks at me from head-to-toe and then her eyes finally fall on Lyla. "...Hi beauty. What's your name?" She smiles at Lyla and reveals that she has very bright, straight white teeth. Lyla turns her head away from her again and starts messing with my hair again.

"She's just shy..." I explain, just so she doesn't think that Lyla is rude or bratty. I pat her back. "Tell her your name..."

"...Lyla." She looks at the girl and touches my ear. "Daddy can we go sit down? I wanna sit down..."

"We have to wait for our food though." I give up on trying to get her to feel comfortable. "Yeah, she's just shy. Her name's Lyla." Emily is still smiling, clearly trying to flirt with me. Before Jenna passed, we were married for seven years; which means I was off the market for seven whole years. I might have been off the market for that long but I still know what it means when girls smile at you and rock back and forth on their feet and try to act all womanly and ladylike. I'm not cocky, but I could have any woman in and around Millerton that I want. Everywhere I go, I get giggles from women, smiles, sneaky pickup lines...all of that. And the truth is that I don't care. Maybe it's because Jenna's death is still fresh, but I'm truthfully not interested in dating anytime soon, if ever. I just want to focus on Lyla, really.

"Well she's just beautiful." Emily turns around and grabs a red tray with all our food on it. She hands the tray over. "Here you are."

"Thanks." I hold the tray with the hand I'm not using to keep Lyla on my hip. "Come on, Ly. Let's go eat."

* * *

I never actually realized how nice Millteron is until just now, driving through it while coming back from the beach. It's a small town sure, but it wouldn't be Millerton if it wasn't small. I can see why Jenna wanted to live here so badly; it really is a safe place to raise our daughter. I drive past The Lobster Hut and see that it's pretty empty for a Sunday night. The weekends are usually packed at The Lobster Hut so I'm surprised to only see a total of five cars in the parking lot. People from out of town come to Millerton just to eat at The Lobster Hut. It's a pretty nice oceanside restaurant but I'm not sure the food is good enough to leave one town just to come to it. The sun is beginning to set and the weather is a lot cooler than it was this afternoon at the beach, which makes riding through Millerton with my windows down quite nice. Owning a car in Millerton is pretty pointless when everything—and I do mean everything—is within walking distance. The library, the grocery store, the pharmacy, the gas station, the fire station, the police station. And if you need something that you can't find here in Millerton, Pensacola is less than half an hour drive from here and you can find whatever you need in that city. I think the only reason people around here own a car is to have some place to store their groceries when they need to go shopping.

As I turn onto the street that will take us home, I glance in my rear view mirror to make sure Lyla's still alright back there. She's lying down on the backseat, fast asleep with her pacifier in her mouth. As soon as I put her in the car to come home, she was out like a light. Seeing her lying asleep on the backseat like that makes me think back to when Jenna and I used to take her to the nearly every day. She would go run around in the water and dig sand holes much like she did today. We'd take her to get an ice cream cone and that would be the end of our day. And just like today, as soon as Lyla would hit the backseat, she'd pass out. Seeing her asleep makes it feel like we're back to the old days but as soon as I look over to my right and see the empty passenger's seat beside me, that feeling goes away. It'll never be the same without Jenna. I creep into the driveway and turn the car off. I get out and shut my door softly so I don't wake her up. I walk around to the back and open up the back door. I gather up our beach bag and then I grab her. I situate her on my shoulder and bump the door shut with my hip.

"Alex! Alex!" Mrs. Jensen calls to me from across the street, as if she had been waiting for me to return all day and she's afraid she might miss me now that she's finally got my attention. I keep my arms securely around Lyla's body and start walking towards her house. She's hurrying down her walkway and opening her gate. I meet her halfway and we're standing in the middle of the street. She's in her nightclothes, I believe. "Someone have a little too much fun at the beach?" She brushes sleeping Lyla's hair away from her face and turns her attention back to me. "Did you ride through town on your way back?" I nod my head. "Well did you see that Agent McKinley is putting that old house up?" This is Mrs. Jensen's version of hot gossip and every time she learns something that I might not already know, she feels as if it's her duty to report it to me. "You know, that house down where Mr. Kirkwood used to live? The one that sits in the way back? McKinley is putting it up for sale...said he'll accept the best offer he can get."

"Oh, really?" I have to pretend to be extremely interested in the fact that she's talking about something I could care less about. "He's probably only gonna get like a hundred for it. That place is a dump." She's talking about this old, one bedroom house that's been abandoned for as long as I can remember. It's over on the other side of Millerton, about two neighborhoods over from us and it really is a dump. Last time I road past it, the paint was chipping off, the steps caved in and the shutters were falling off. There used to be talk of turning it into a haunted house attraction for Halloween around here but it never went through. "No one's gonna want to move in that place."

"I was thinking about making an offer on it and maybe turning it into my greenhouse but it's a little far off from me." She goes back to touching Lyla's hair and I really wish she wouldn't because I don't want her to wake her up but I don't tell her to stop. Mrs. Jensen always wanted grandkids but her children never had any. They're around my age so maybe someday they'll have them since they still have time but it's unlikely. She uses Lyla as a substitute granddaughter for that reason. She'll often bring the dog over in the yard to let Lyla play with him, she'll give her popsicles and send her a plate of cookies over if she bakes. Truth be told, Mrs. Jensen and Jenna were good friends and the two of us were not. Jenna used to be a book club with Mrs. Jensen before she got sick. When she got sick, she didn't have the energy to do much of anything besides lie in the bed and watch the Hallmark Channel. I think because she and my wife were close, Mrs. Jensen feels like she has to talk to me every time she sees me but that's not the case. I wouldn't be the least bit offended if she just waved at me as we were passing. She doesn't have to talk to me. Secretly, I think that by talking to me, it's her own way of seeing how I'm doing without Jenna. "Whoever he decides to put in it, I hope they don't bring the neighborhood down. Millerton is a quiet place and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Yeah, me too." I hope she doesn't stand here and keep me in this boring, pointless conversation for too much longer because I have stuff I need to do. I need to get Lyla in the bath and to bed for the night. I need to wash the dishes I left in the kitchen sink this morning. I need to call my dad and make sure he knows that he needs to be over my house by 5:15 tomorrow morning so I can be at work by 6:00. I need to shower myself and be in bed by 9:00. "I'd better get her to bed..." I make up a quick excuse as to why I have to leave. "I'll talk to you sometime tomorrow, Mrs. Jensen."

"Take care over there, Alex. And send that pretty little girl over to me sometime if you need a break. She can help me out back while I bathe the dog." She retreats back to her house and I walk across the street to my own.

"Will do." I close my gate and walk up the steps so I can finally take Lyla into the house.


	4. Possibilities

I use my shoulder to hold the phone to my ear as I just listen to her preach, rant and rave to me. I zoned out a long time ago and she's just talking to hear herself talk right now. I was in the middle of washing the dishes before she called and interrupted me. Now I don't when I'll find the time to get these dishes done. There's a sink full of them and the more I stared at them, the more I found that they weren't just going to wash themselves and the more I missed pawning them off on Rachel to wash. I finally decided to stop being so lazy after I finished putting my little bit of groceries away, and I started to wash them but just as I started loading the dishwasher, my mom called and stalled my process. When I heard the phone ring, I was crossed between "hallelujah" and "damn, what does she want?" I was looking, waiting, hoping and praying for a reason to not have to wash the dishes, which is why I was so glad that god sent a phone call my way but I was a little bummed to see that it was my mom calling. I would rather it be anyone in this world than my mother. Not that I hate hearing from her, I just hate how she can talk to me for days if I let her. She just goes on and on and on and on and I have to be mentally prepared to talk to my mom, which I am not at the moment. Right now, she's saying something about how she went to the liquor store this morning and that's when I stopped listening. I always thought it was funny how my mom is so concerned about high fructose corn syrup going into her body but she'll down a bottle of booze before breakfast and not give a damn. She's not an alcoholic, don't get me wrong. I was just being facetious.

"Yeah, mom." I mumble into the receiver just to let her know that I'm still here. When my mom calls, she does most of the talking. My end of the conversation usually consists of "yeah", "okay", "fine", "love you too". Her end of the conversation usually starts off with her asking me how I'm doing and then she'll go off on her own little tirade and I'll zone out. "Because I do." I giggle, before she starts to take what I just said seriously. She just asked me why I sounded like I hate my life and I told her it's because I do. Part of me—and I'm not sure just how big that part is—but part of me was being serious when I said that. My mom and I have the same sense of humor and I know that she would've understood that I was just being a sarcastic asshole but just in case she might think that I was being serious, I clean it up. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just really tired..." I fashion a yawn just to prove to her that it's tiredness and not angst. "Yeah, I'm gonna have dinner with a friend in a little and then I'm just gonna...hit the sack." She says "alright honey" and then starts talking again about how she tried something new with a chicken breast today—the chicken was raised on a farm, of course, and still had all the feathers she had to pluck off before she cooked it.

Growing up, I got used to eating things that were naturally sweetened, shipped straight from the farm and had no artificial food coloring. But I have a feeling that if I ever went to my mom's house for dinner now, I would throw up if she put half the crap she used to feed me for dinner down my throat. "Hey mom..." I interrupt her midway through her telling me exactly what she did with the chicken after she plucked it's feathers off. She says, "What, Jos?" and stops talking. I hate when she calls me that, but she's been calling me that for as long as I can remember. My mom has a million nicknames for me. She's got Jojo, Jos, Joey, Josie, Phine and Moe. I have no idea where she got Moe from and I've never asked. "I miss you." Just thinking about how much she loved me enough to make my baby food from scratch and change the diapers she made for me out of cloth (because as a Chemistry major, she knew that they put sodium polyacrylate in baby diapers and she didn't want me to get butt cancer since sodium polyacrylate is a carcinogen). I haven't seen my mom in six months. She flew down after everything happened and she stayed with me until I was well enough to leave the hospital and she wanted to stay longer but she couldn't. She has a job up there in New Jersey and she couldn't stay forever. I haven't seen her since. "Just thought you should know." She says, "awww, I miss you too Joey" and sounds like she's getting teary-eyed. I didn't mean to make her cry I just don't think I tell her that I miss her often enough.

Now she goes on and on about how much she misses me and how badly she wants to see me. "I have to go, mom. I'm supposed to be at my friend's for dinner by six." I slide out from the kitchen table I'm sitting at and stand up. My legs stiffened up from sitting down for too long but they're nowhere near as stiff as they are when I first wake up in the morning. "Yeah...I love you too, mom. Mhm. Yeah, I will. I will. I love you too. Bye." I hang up the phone and stick it in my back pocket. My mom is the sweetest woman I know, aside from Mrs. Robinson. She's so sweet and she's so nice and I hate to worry her so she really doesn't know my entire situation. She knows that Mark's parents sued me to make sure that I don't get to see any of his money and she knows that I've got this big house all to myself. But that's all she knows. She doesn't know that I'm going to be homeless soon and she doesn't know that when they sued me, they took everything BUT the house. I don't have health insurance anymore, I don't have enough money to pay my mortgage and I don't have enough money for a place to live in a town like Chamberlain, where nothing is cheaper than $450 a month. I don't even have a job to pretend like I can pay for this expensive crap and no one around here is going to hire the widow—and not to mention, murderer—of Mark Warren. I have a teaching degree...I can teach anywhere from Kindergarten to 12th grade and I'm certified to teach any branch of mathematics at high school level but there's no use because no one's gonna hire me anyway. And well, if I told my mom just how bad things are with me right now, she would be on the first plane here and she wouldn't leave until I was alright. I don't want her to put a hold on her life for a mess of mine that I made myself.

I make my way to the front door and walk down my front steps to go to Mrs. Robinson's house. When I think about it, I want to laugh at myself for what I've become. It's funny, really. Okay, maybe when you hear the story it's not exactly the funniest thing in the world but when I think about it myself, I find it pretty hilarious. I'm a Chemistry teacher's daughter from New Jersey, for crying out loud. If I had never met Mark, I wouldn't be able to afford any of this. I wouldn't even know a richy-rich town like Chamberlain existed. I don't belong here. My mom was never rich, I'm not used to this kind of lifestyle and I shouldn't be surprised that I can't keep up with it. I slowly climb the steps to Mrs. Robinson's front porch and ring her doorbell. She always tells me that I'm more than welcome to just walk right in her front door but I can't do that. It's not the way my mom raised me. I can't just walk into people's houses without being invited. While I wait for her to answer the door, I turn back around and look back at my house. There's a part of me that wishes that they would just lock the damn house up already. I don't know where I'm going to go when they lock the house up but when they do, at least it won't be my responsibility anymore.

The door opens up and pulls my attention away from the house I was just staring at. "Come on in, Jo." Mrs. Robinson holds her screen door open with her hip, since her hands are occupied by her stirring something in a large blue bowl. I pull the door open and step inside. "You caught me while I'm in the middle of laying this cake batter." It's not the first time I've been in her house but each time I come in here, I can't help but look around. Her house reminds me of the one I grew up in. The walls are all painted different colors in each room and each room has a specific color scheme. The living room is dark green and brown. The dining room is red and gold. Her kitchen is black and white and I've never been upstairs to see what other things she has up there. Inside her house is warm and very homely and it smells heavily of a delicious meal. It's a small house really, but only she lives here so it can be small without it being an issue. "Do you like angel food cake, Jo? Don't think I ever asked that."

"I like everything you make. I'm not a very picky eater." I hold onto her wall for support as I walk down a tiny flight of two steps to get into her kitchen, where we'll be eating. "Do you need help with anything?" I go immediately over to her sink so I can wash my hands just in case she needs help with something around here. Mrs. Robinson could've been a caterer. She's retired now but she used to be a nurse. I think she missed her calling because there's nothing that she makes that isn't delicious. She's a really good cook. "I could peel potatoes or something for you...anything you need." I'm just so grateful that she's feeding food that doesn't come in a box. She doesn't let me say thank you so I try to express my gratitude in other ways.

"With the way you're limping around? Sit down. I've got everything." She puts her bowl of cake batter down on the counter and grabs my arm. "Sit down, Jo." She helps me over to a chair. "You really ought to go see a doctor about your hips. They might be able to prescribe you something stronger than over-the-counter pain pills. You shouldn't be in this much pain all the time." I look down and trace the familiar scar that starts at my knee, but I stop once the rest of it disappears underneath the fabric of my shorts. It's quiet between us but my favorite thing about Mrs. Robinson is that she's not the kind of person that warrants conversation. She doesn't make it awkward when we don't talk. She understands silence, accepts silence and doesn't feel the need to break it. She starts running her fingers through my messy hair in a very motherly kind of way. "When's the last time you talked to your mama, Jo?" I blush when she asks about her...I always do. Every time she asks me about my mom, my mind goes back to when she told me that she wanted to meet "the woman responsible for raising an amazing young woman" and it makes me blush. It also makes me feel guilty that I never thought about introducing my mom to her while my mom was here when I was in the hospital.

"I talked to her just before I came over here, actually." I start at my kneecap again and trace the same scar until it disappears under my shorts once more. To the naked eye and the normal person, the scars on my legs really aren't all that noticeable. But they're on my body and I spend a lot of time looking at these scars...so they're pretty prominent to me. "She still doesn't know about the...house and stuff." I clear my throat and instead of looking down at my scars that only make me sad, I twist a lock of my hair around my finger over and over again. I pull my finger down and watch the curl unfurl. I clench my top teeth down on my bottom lip and my jaw starts to tremble. "...What am I going to do when they actually do take it away? Where am I gonna live?" I purse my lips into a hard line but it doesn't help the fact that tears are already spilling over my eyelids. "I thought I didn't care, but..." I stare at the rooster figurine she has in the middle of her oven so I can focus on something other than the tears streaming down my cheeks. "It wouldn't be so bad if someone would just...hire me." I shake my head. "Shouldn't it be illegal for them to tell me no? Based on what I did?" I quickly wipe my tears away before they can fall further down my cheeks. "...They don't tell me that that's why they're saying no but I know that's why. They'll make up some excuse...about how they already filled the position or need someone with more experience...but I know why they won't hire me." I sniff. "I just wish I didn't have to be me sometimes."

"But I like you." She hands me a package of travel tissues and goes back to stroking my hair. "And I know sometimes that's not enough, but you gotta remember that the world does not revolve around everything and everybody here in Chamberlain. There's a world far beyond here. I know how crummy things are for you around here...I know it must be hard to have to walk around a town every day with a target on your back." Like she always does when she's offering me comfort, she nestles her hand underneath my chin and lifts my head up. Don't let them win, though. You need to walk around, hold your head high and show them how strong you are. If you walk around with your tail between your legs then you're just showing them the kind of coward they already think you are. You don't need to be running around locking yourself in your house all the time because what does that prove? That they bother you enough to keep you from leaving your house?" I look away from her. I can't look her in her eye while she's saying all these things to me; especially when I really am a coward. "I told you things will die down...and they have, haven't they? Haven't they?"

I nod my head very slowly. Things are still bad around here for me, but the worst part is that it used to be worse. I used to wake up every morning to notes taped to my door, things written on my windows, flattened tires on the car, trashcans overturned...I used to get death threats from people calling me a murderer. As bad as things still are for me, I will admit that they have gotten progressively better over the last six months. "But what am I supposed to do when nobody will give me a job? I need a job. I have no money, I'm about to have no house...I can't just sit here. I have money saved up but I can't live on that forever. It's gonna run out eventually and I have no source of income." I run my fingers through my hair and close my eyes in an attempt to ward off a headache I feel coming on. "They took everything from me." I sniff again. "I just never realized without Mark...how I have nothing."

"That's not true, Jo." She rubs my back in a small circle and goes back over to the stove to check on our dinner. "You could always stay here. You know you're welcome to the couch for as long as you need when everything crumbles." She opens the oven and pokes around at the pot roast with a fork. I've stayed on her couch before. The day they first threatened to foreclose the house, I came over here late at night an cried to her about it and she made me a plate of stuffed chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans and she fed me. And she made me a bed on her couch and I slept on her couch for the night. It's a comfortable couch and I had a very good night's sleep but I can't stay on her couch forever. I greatly appreciate the fact that she offered but I just can't. I don't like feeling like I mooch off her. "But don't let me hear you say that again. That man didn't make you and his stupid ass parents damn sure didn't knock you down a peg by making sure you didn't see none of that money." She takes the pot roast out of the oven and puts it on top of it. "But don't let me hear you say that again. You can stay with me until you get on your feet."

"Thanks, but..." I pick myself up out of the chair slowly to grab two plates from her cabinet, since it appears that dinner is finished. "I can't do that. I don't know when I'm going to be able to get on my feet and I don't know how long it's going to take. I could be staying with you for years..and not that that would be a bad thing because there's nowhere in the world I'd rather be than here in this house with you...because I feel so...so safe when I'm here." I put the two plates down on the counter. "But I can't drag you into my mess and I can't let you take care of me while I'm trying to right my wrongs. I won't let you." I grab the serving spoon for the platter of potatoes, carrots and butter. I scoop two spoonfuls on each of our plates. "So no thank you, Mrs. Robinson."

"Jo, I would be honored to have you stay here with me." She starts scraping pieces of roast beef onto my plate. "But if you feel as though you need to do this on your own, I understand." She hands me a biscuit from the basket on the counter next to her coffee maker. I know she made the biscuits from scratch. "So why don't we sit down...just the two of us...and come up with a plan for you." She takes her plate over to the table and sits down, so I follow her lead. I sit across from her and spread a napkin in my lap. I'm not sure what she means by "a plan" but I'm too hungry to ask. I pick up my fork and stab a potato cube with it. "How many places have you applied to?" She asks me, before sending a helping of roast into her mouth.

I push my mouthful of chewed up potato to the side of my cheek so I can talk to her with my mouth full. "Fifteen...not including the online application I filled out yesterday at the library for JC Penney." I lick my lips clean of butter from the potato and carrot mixture on my plate. "The elementary school won't hire me, the middle school said no and the high school told me that they're not looking for anyone." I sigh and smash a potato down with my fork. "I hope I find a teaching job soon. My certificate expires in two months and after it expires, I'm not allowed to renew it without a job." I put my fork down and pick up my biscuit. "I wish they would've just taken it from the start. They took everything else, why not my teaching certificate too?"

"Don't say that either." She puts her fork down and gives me that stern, motherly kind of look. "You worked hard for your education, Jo. Too hard for them to piss it away over one little mistake. I've seen teachers sleep with students and still be permitted to teach in other districts. You want them to take your certificate away over something you didn't even mean to do?" She's still giving me a hard look so to seem innocent, I pick up my fork and start eating again. "So you've applied to fifteen places?" She finally stops looking at me that way and starts eating again. I just nod my head. "And none of them have called you back?" I shake my head. "Jo, why don't you leave?" I look up at her and wrinkle my brow. Leave? What does she mean leave? Does she mean leave her house? I politely put my fork back down and scoot out from the chair I'm siting in. "Not here, sweetheart." She puts her hand up. "The town, I mean. Why don't you leave? Get yourself out of here and go somewhere else? Somewhere where people don't know you..."

"Go where?" I fold my hands and tilt my head. "I've got nothing. I don't have a car, I barely have money. I have my savings...and that's not much. I can't afford to leave. The only place I'd be able to go is New Jersey and I don't want to go back living with my mom. She doesn't even know how bad things are with me right now, can you imagine if I just showed up on her doorstep one day and told her that I came back because I lost my house and no one around here will hire the mayor's murderer?" The idea sounds good, I admit. But I can't just up and leave Chamberlain when I have literally no place else in this world to go. Until I sat here talking to Mrs. Robinson, I myself didn't even realize how horrible my life is going at the moment. Isn't it crazy how things can change in the blink of an eye like that? Just six months ago, my life was perfect. I was living in the nicest house in all of Chamberlain with a man that was equally as charming as he was wealthy. I was working towards getting a job in a local middle school even though I didn't have to work and we were talking about having a baby. One night and one mistake changed everything for me and now I'm 29 years old with no job, no money and nothing to do to help myself out of this predicament I've gotten myself in. "And everyone in Massachusetts knows about me. It's only a matter of time before everything catches up to me and people start treating me the way they treat me here."

"So don't stay in Massachusetts." She has a response for everything so I'm not surprised that she had a quip. She scoots out from her chair and walks across the kitchen, over to a drawer that she pulls open. She sifts through the drawer for a moment and produces a blue and green paper. It looks like a pamphlet or a brochure. I turn my head to one side to see if I can tell what the paper says but I can't so I just decide to wait until she brings it back to the table. It's not long before she does. She sits back down at the table and reaches across it to hand me the paper. I take it from her and before I even have the chance to question her about it, she starts explaining. "It's a bus line...for the Massachusetts Transit. It comes to Chamberlain every Monday afternoon and it'll take you anywhere on the east coast that you wanna go. It can have you anywhere within a matter of days. That right there...that's your atlas. That's every route it takes, everywhere it'll take you, the times that you have to get on it and your approximate arrival time." I open it up and stare at the map on the inside. The map has a million yellow lines streaking across it, telling me all the places it'll go. "I got on it once...visited my grandson down in South Carolina." I turn the page and am surprised to see a totally different map with more routes. "Why don't you get on that bus tomorrow and ride it until you can't ride no more. And wherever you end up...wherever you end up is where you stay." I feel tears coming on and I just shake my head. I can't just go...I can't. "Jo, there's nothing here for you. You toughed it out for six whole months and I'm proud of you for that. I am. But it's time you go and make a life for yourself away from here. You need a place where you're more than just Mark Warren's widow. You need a place where people don't know you and where you can be yourself. I think you need to go."

I close the bus map and put it down next to my plate. "I can't. I can't just leave you...after everything you've done for me, you expect me to just..." I close my mouth and take a deep breath. "I can't leave you and I can't just go somewhere else. Where would I go? This bus goes everywhere. How could I decide?" She gets up from her chair again and walks over to my side of the table. She picks up the map and opens it up. "There are so many places..."

"Don't you worry about me, first of all." She puts the map in front of me and hovers over my back to read it. "I'll be fine without you. I'll be happier knowing that you are. And as long as you promise to keep in touch with me, I'll be quite alright. That's the best way you can repay me. The best way you can repay me for all of this is to go and find your footing somewhere where people don't misjudge you. Somewhere where you never have to hear about Mark Warren and his parents and Chamberlain and accidents ever again if you don't want to. That's the best way to repay me." She squeezes my shoulders. "And you don't have to decide; that's the beauty of it. You can ride on that bus for as long as you want to and when you see a place that you like, just stay."

"For some reason, I don't think it's that simple." I take the map off her and look over all the places it goes. Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and every city in those states, it just goes to. That's crazy, isn't it? That a bus...one simple bus...can house so many possibilities. "So I just get on a bus...ride it to...let's say, Florida, for example. So I get on the bus and ride it to Florida and then I just get off in any city I want? And once I'm in that city, then what? I still have no job and no house..."

"But it'll be easier for you to find a job in a town where nobody knows you, don't you think?" She sounds more excited than I do and I think it's because I'm really not excited for this. I just want to turn back time and undo the mistake I made six months ago. I don't want to leave my home and I wish my husband was still alive. The thing that's been the worst about Mark's death is the fact that nobody has even given me a chance to process all of this and grieve. I wake up one morning with a headache and find that I can't move my legs. Next thing I know, someone's telling me that my husband's dead, a doctor is telling me that someone else is dead too, but I don't really want to talk about that and that it's my fault. Before I know it, I'm thrust into a lawsuit and people are trying to take my house and everything I own away from me. Nevermind the fact that my husband—the man I loved—just died. I've been worrying too much about keeping up with the mortgage payment after being sued for every dime I thought I owned, worrying too much about how to keep my bills paid...I've been worrying too much to properly grieve the loss of my husband and nobody seems to care. I just need a moment to grieve...I need a moment to process everything that happened that night without being called a murderer or a killer. "I'll give you bus fare if you promise me you'll go. Just promise me you'll go and you'll stop living like this."

I stare at the map in my hands and for some reason, my eyes keep going back to Florida. Mrs. Robinson has been right about everything she's said so far. She's right about there being nothing for me in Chamberlain anymore. She's right about me needing to go somewhere that people don't know me and she's right about it being easier to find a job in my new town than it is here. I can't even get hired at the JC Penney around here. I have no idea where in the hell I'm going to settle down at but at least I have a state in mind. As much as I once loved Chamberlain and the state of Massachusetts, I want to be as far away from here as possible. When I leave, I don't ever want to see this place and the people in it ever again. This place holds way too many horrible memories for me and once I get the hell out of here, I hope that I never have to relive those memories again. "...So it looks like I'm going to Florida." I sigh. I'm still uncertain about this whole thing. I still don't know if getting on a bus to another state is the right decision for me but honestly, my life in any of the 50 states can't get much worse than what my life here in Massachusetts is. I realize that I'm taking a really big chance by going to another state with no sure job in mind, only a few hundred bucks in tow and no family but the more I think about it, the more I realize that this really is my only good option. It's not like anybody around here is going to miss me, aside from Mrs. Robinson. Hell, people might throw a party.

Part of me wishes that Mark wasn't the mayor and so well liked. If we were just some normal couple, nobody in Chamberlain would give a hoot that he died. But since he was the beloved mayor of the city, everyone cares. He really was an amazing guy. So amazing that candlelight vigils were held all across the state of Massachusetts in the days following his death. When most men become mayor of their city, they forget about all the little people they had to step on to get to where they are. But not Mark. No, Mark was amazing. He would go help out at the food bank downtown, volunteer at the salvation army. He would donate most of his money to charities and he _loved_ kids. He bought a supply truck full of diapers and donated them to mothers around Massachusetts that needed to diaper their babies. He gave a hundred thousand dollars to St. Jude's hospital for research, to cure cancer. Once, he saw a single mother with five children standing in line down at the food bank. Instead of having her and her children wait in line, he packed them up in his own personal car and took them grocery shopping. My husband was an amazing man. He was an even better husband. He kissed me every morning before he went in to his office and would send flowers to the house at random times of the day. Every time I was mad at him, he would insist that we sit out on the back porch, looking up at the stars while we talked about it. He would've been an amazing father too. I can understand why everyone is so upset with me since I'm the reason he's dead. His death truly was a tremendous loss to the city of Chamberlain. I still can't believe someone like him was married to someone like me...and for five years, too. It would've been six years in two weeks, I believe...but I don't know for sure since I hate looking at the calendar. I really do miss my husband.

"I should probably head home and start packing up what I can...before the real estate agency comes and puts a lock on the place before I can hightail it out of here." I stand up and put my plate in her sink. "Thank you, Mrs. Robinson...for everything."


	5. Far and Away

When I finally have a free moment, I put down the binder I was carrying and rest my elbows against the light pink and green counter of the nurses' station. There's nobody currently at the station so I don't have to worry about interacting with anyone and that's the way I like for it to be. I reach in the breast pocket of my white coat and grab my favorite black ink pen out of it. I click the top of the pen to push the ballpoint out and flip the teal binder open so I can sign these charts. I hear the sound of wheels rolling towards me but like I always do when I hear the wheels, I internally tell myself that if I don't look up, she'll just roll on by. Sometimes ignoring her works, other times it doesn't; it all just depends on the day. I keep my head down and pretend to be really busy signing off on the kid from room eight's discharge forms. "Hey Alex." She rolls by but before she completely bypasses me, she smacks me a bunch of times on my back and stops herself at the counter next to me. "What's going on?" She blows a bright pink bubble and when it pops, the smell of bubblegum fills my nose. "Any cool cases that I can steal off you?" She slides the binder away from me just as I was getting ready to sign the last page of the discharge forms and flips through it, completely losing my place.

"Nothing cool yet...and it's almost lunch time, so you know what that means." I take the binder back off her and flip to my spot. "If I haven't gotten anything good yet, I probably won't get anything good at all. All I've done all day is clean up the Pyloric baby's puke." I finish signing off on the discharge forms and close the binder. "Why, what do you have?" I rest one of my arms against the counter and turn to look at her. "Anything you can share?" She shakes her head, sending her blonde curls flying all over the place. She looks down at the pager around her neck, rolls her eyes and puts it back down. "...What is it? You want me to take it?" I just offer to be nice, not because I really want to take it. If whatever it is, is bad enough to make her roll her eyes then I probably don't want the case either. She fixes her hair and adjusts her own white coat, which is home to an embroidered giraffe right above the breast pocket. The Pediatrics floor is supposed to be a happy place, which I find to be ironic because the people that work on this floor are miserable 80% of the time.

"It's nothing, I just totally forgot that I have an appy on a six year old this afternoon and Kasey is JUST NOW paging me to remind me about it. The kid's appendix could've burst by now and she thinks that right now is an appropriate time to page me and remind me. These interns, I'm telling you..." She shakes her head and leans against the counter right beside me. "I'm just gonna have to take a late lunch, I guess." Again, she rolls her eyes and shakes her head at the same time. "Can you check on the Marshall twins for me? Since I apparently have an appendectomy to perform in two hours, I won't be able to do it. But it really shouldn't be that much, all they should need is their bandages changed and their meds refilled. Sorry for blindsiding you with this."

"It's fine...better than anything I have scheduled." I put the binder I just closed on the nurse's desk and put my pen back in my pocket. The Marshall twins are a set of twins that used to be conjoined at the hips. We separated them last month and they've been doing quite well but they won't be released to go home until for at least another month. Their parents stay with them 24/7 and every time we go in to check on them, they're on their toes and always questioning what we're doing to them. "Hey listen...I can't be here past 7:00 tonight. Uh...Lyla's with my dad and I don't want to leave her with him for too long, just in case she starts to miss me."

"That's fine, I can have you outta here by 6:30. It's a slow day so I probably won't need you much, plus my shift's over at 7:30 anyway." She looks behind me as if she's checking on something and then back at me. I can see why she's a pediatrician. She's real easy on the eyes and she looks nice, with the blonde hair and blue eyes thing she has going on. When she's not annoyed, she's probably the happiest person I know. She's the definition of bright and sunshiney and kids love her. "Speaking of your little girl, how is she? She hanging in there?" I shrug my shoulders. "How about you? Are you hanging in there?" I shrug again. "Well you know if you need anything...help with her or anything at all, you know you can call. Callie and I would love nothing more than to help you out and you know that." It's nice that she's offering her support and all since Arizona is one of my friends, but honestly...I'm tired of hearing that. The whole, "if you need anything" and "hang in there" thing? Yeah, I'm sick and tired of hearing that; not just from her but from everybody.

For some reason, people think that it actually means something to me when they say that. They think that they're doing some holy deed and making me feel better by offering their shoulder to cry on when in reality, none of that means anything to me. I wish I were one of those guys that could say, "if I didn't have my friends to lean on for support, I don't know what I would do" but I can't say that and be honest because well, I don't have friends. I don't have friends, I don't do friends and up until her death, Jenna was my best friend. I'm well-liked in the hospital amongst my coworkers and the people of Millerton know that I'm a nice guy but I don't really have friends. I have people that I talk to every now and again but nobody that I would invite over for a beer or whatever. Everyone I encounter at work talks to me daily. They ask me how I'm doing, how Lyla's doing and if I need anything. I think the only reason they ever ask is because they don't know what else to say to the man who just lost his wife and is now raising his daughter alone. They don't really care, they just need something to say to me. And the ones that actually care are nurses and surgical technicians and still and yet, the only reason they ask is to see if I'm over my wife and accepting dates yet. When Jenna was alive, girls drooled over me all the time but they knew I was taken so they didn't really make a move. They know that she's dead now and they take that as a free pass when really, it's not. I'm still not interested.

"I'll catch up with you later." She puts her hand on my shoulder. "I'm gonna go prep for my surgery. If there are any abnormalities with the Marshall twins' vitals, just page me. And be alert...I might need you to come tag me out of surgery if something's up." I just nod my head at her and pick up an electronic chart up off the charging dock on the counter of the nurses' station. She pats my shoulder as a silent, final goodbye and skates off in her wheely sneakers again. What I don't quite understand is why she wouldn't just have an intern do the appendectomy. One of the things I like about Arizona Robbins as a doctor is that she prefers to do even the most minute procedures herself, so her patients get the best care. She does everything by herself and the only person she ever really trusts to do things in place of her or take over for her is me. But sometimes that bites her in the ass a bit because she often spreads herself way too thin.

I put my chart in my pocket and walk in the direction of the PICU. Before I got a job here at Pensacola Children's, I did an internship and my residency at a regular hospital. I thought that hospitals couldn't get much bigger than the hospital I completed my internship and residency at but I was wrong. The hospital I currently work in is just as big, if not bigger, than the other one. I thought that working in a Children's hospital would be a smaller, less intense environment since we don't treat adults here but it's not. There's the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, the Pediatric Oncology Floor, Ear Nose and Throat Floor, Hematology and Blood Disorders Floor, Same Day Surgery, Pediatric Cardiology Floor, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit...and so, so much more. I prefer to work on the PICU like I am today but really, I'll work anywhere. Except the Oncology floor. I hate the Oncology floor for obvious reasons. There's just something that isn't right about seeing beautiful little kids walk around with bald heads. That's not the way the world should be. Anyway, we don't treat adults here in this hospital but the adults that do come in here are the parents and the parents are worse than the patients.

I knock softly on the door to the Marshall twins' room and open the door. Mrs. Marshall is sitting in a chair next to Molly's crib and Mr. Marshall is sitting next to Megan's crib. Both the girls are asleep in their respective cribs and some children's program is playing on the TV. "Good morning." I mumble as I shut the door behind myself. "I'm Dr. Karev...I'm just gonna check the girls' vitals, change their meds and I'll be on my way." It's not the first time I've checked on the twins so I'm sure that they already know who I am but I like to introduce myself every time I walk in the room. "Did a certain set of twins have too much fun partying and drinking chocolate milk last night or what?" I pull on a pair of gloves and go to Molly's crib first. Mrs. Marshall laughs and reaches in the crib to stroke Molly's hair. "My little girl doesn't even sleep past 10:00 in the morning and she's older than they are. What kind of kids do you guys have?"

Mr. Marshall sits up in his chair and yawns, like he hasn't gotten much sleep. Neither one of them sleep much. They spend their every waking moment next to their daughters' bedsides. "I'm willing to bet that they day we're able to take them home is the day they'll decide that 8:00 in the morning is a decent hour to wake us up." He chuckles and looks at his wife, who's too busy pushing Molly's bright red hair forward. "We miss having them awake for the majority of the day...but I guess it's nice to have them sleep so they're not in pain." I gently roll Molly onto her side so I can check her bandages and make sure her wounds aren't bleeding. Her gauze is still clean so I leave it alone. I check the yellow heart-shaped monitor on her chest that keeps track of her temperature. Sometimes I hate my job. I really do enjoy coming to work every day and seeing all the sick kids that I can help cure and send home to be with their parents but at times, I absolutely hate it. It makes me feel crappy how I'm good with everyone else's kids but I can't take care of my own half the damn time.

"I didn't know you had children, Dr. Karev." Mrs. Marshall takes her hands away from Molly so I can work. She's been through this enough times to know how this whole ordeal works, so she knows that I'm about to unhook her IV and change the fluids in it; she knows that she should stop touching her for this. I hold Molly's arm still and twist off the end of her IV. "How old are they?"

"I have one...a little girl. And she's three." I hook a new bag of fluid into her IV and screw it tight. "Lyla's her name." I gently caress Molly's bruised arm before I move on to her sister. These poor kids have been jabbed and jammed with IVs and needles more times than I care to count and both their arms are like pincushions, all bruised and calloused. Another time that I begin to hate my job is when I see little kids as sweet as the Marshall twins are with life-threatening conditions. I mean, it's hard enough to see adults suffer through the crap they have to suffer from but it's a totally different kind of hard to see little kids that don't deserve it suffer. Most of the time, when adults are in the hospital for something, it's through a fault of their own. Like when they have cirrhosis of their livers or something like that, they drank themselves to it...or smoked themselves to it, or tanned their way to skin cancer. But little kids don't deserve the crappy hands they get dealt and that gets hard on me sometimes.

I carefully roll Megan on her side and check her bandages too. "So the rumors are true." Mrs. Marshall crosses her legs and smiles at me.

"What rumors?" I check Megan's temperature and see that it's just a little bit high. I'll put a fever reducer in her IV bag instead of administering it to her orally or rectally. If I give her a tiny orange pill, it'll alarm her parents and they'll freak out for the rest of the day because again, they've been here long enough to pick up on the fact that most of the time, fevers indicate infections and infections mean longer hospital stays. So I'll just stick it in her IV bag to prevent all the hoopla. On the electronic monitor, I push a dose of diphenhydramine into her system and unscrew her IV.

"The rumors about you being a single father. I didn't want to believe them...you don't seem like the type. But you have a kid, you don't wear a wedding ring and it looks like they're true." She washes me change Megan's IV. "But it makes sense that you have a child...you're so good with mine."

I smirk and finish up with Megan. "Then yeah, I guess the rumors are true." I clean up the paper from the new bandage I just strapped on Megan's arm and take my gloves off. "Your girls are doing perfectly. I'll be back later, before my shift's over to check up on them again. When they wake up, you should try to give them breakfast...they should be well enough to stomach food." I throw the gloves and the bandage paper in the trash. "Take care, alright?"

"We'll see you, Dr. Karev." The two of them wave at me as I leave. Back when Jenna's death was still fresh, I used to shut completely down whenever people would even mention anything that had to do with Jenna. It's still hard to deal with the fact that she's gone, but I've learned how to let it roll off my shoulders. It doesn't bother me as much as it used to when people ask about her or refer to me as "a single dad". I shut the door to the Marshall's room and look down at the watch on my left wrist. It's almost noon. I guess it's an appropriate time to take my lunch. I walk back towards the nurses' station that I talked to Arizona at. The nurses are back from their very early lunch so they're all sitting at their desks and pretending like they're doing something important. I drop the electronic chart off on the charging dock and walk past them, leaving their stares and giggles behind. The nurses are the most annoying creatures in this building. They annoy me the most because they're the most blatant ones about their infatuation with me. They're always offering to buy me lunch, offering to share their cake or cookies with me and just looking for a reason to talk to me. It's rather annoying how they don't take my "no thanks" and my "I already have lunch" as a hint. There's even a male nurse that offered to buy me lunch once. His name is Cooper and he's very openly gay. I told Cooper that he's not my type and he hasn't bothered me since. That was hands-down the most awkward conversation I've ever had in my life and I hope to never have it again.

"Dr. Karev!" One of them yells to me just as I'm about to round the corner to get on the elevator. I stop in my tracks and turn around to see what she wants. I think her name Erin. She has long, black hair and pale white skin. Her blue eyes stand out against her snowy white face and some people might think that the black hair makes her blue eyes look even prettier but I think black hair and blue eyes is kind of creepy. She should've stayed blonde like she was when I first started working here. "Your daughter's here." She motions for me to come back and for a moment, I can't move my legs. Lyla's here? Like in the hospital, as a patient, kind of here? I don't know why that's the first thing my mind goes to but it is. And I start thinking of all the things that she could be here for.

I scratch the back of my head and mentally prepare myself for whatever reason she's here for. I would be less shaken up if I was working down on the Cardiology floor and they told me she was here, because Lyla is healthy as a horse and I know she doesn't have heart problems. But I'm working on the Intensive Care Unit and this is the first place they bring critical patients after they get triaged in the ER. God, please let my daughter be okay. I don't know how I'll deal with losing her too. I sling my hands down in my pockets and walk back towards the nurses' station and once I get over there, I'm so relieved to see that Lyla is wearing a yellow visitor's pass on her shirt and my dad is standing a few steps behind her, talking to another nurse. I didn't see her because she's so short that she was hidden behind the counter. She's standing with her head down and she's wringing her hands. This is too many people for her. "Hey." I kneel down on the floor and hold my arms out for her.

"Daddy!" She looks very surprised to see me. She runs to me and jumps in my arms and man, that's a good feeling. I don't think she's ever jumped in my arms like that. "Hi daddy!"

"Hi Lyla." I hold her tight against my body and stand up straight. I give her a kiss on her cheek. "What are you doing here?" It's not until I stop kissing her cheek that I realize I'm smiling so hard that my cheeks are numb. I can't tell if I'm happy to see her or if I'm relieved that she's okay. I decide that I'm a little bit of both. As I'm holding her, I start to fix her clothes. She has a white tank top with a watermelon on the front on and a pair of pink shorts. My dad brushed her hair up into a ponytail but since she has side bangs cut out, they don't go into her ponytail and they're hanging down in her face. I'm still trying to figure out why exactly my dad brought her here. "Why'd pappy bring you here?"

"I dunno." She shrugs her shoulders and puts her cheek against mine and hugs my head. "What are you doin' daddy?"

"I'm working." I secure my grip around her and walk over to my dad. He just finished talking to his nurse friend. "What are you here for, dad?" Lyla's looking around and running her little fingers through my hair. "I thought you were taking her to that thing down at the YMCA today. How did you end up in Pensacola?"

"We did. We went to the YMCA and she had some fun but she kept asking me when you were going to be home. And she asked me if we could come see you. It's only about a fifteen minute drive from where we were and I figured it would be around your lunch break." He's holding Lyla's pacifier in his hand and his cell phone in the other. "She really wanted to see you."

I turn my head and look Lyla in her pretty green eyes. When I asked her why he brought her here, she told me she didn't know. I guess maybe she didn't want me to know that she missed me. "Why'd you tell me you didn't know why you were here? Why didn't you tell me you missed me?" She looks down and shrugs again. I kiss her cheek again and that makes her smile. This is only about the third or fourth time my dad's brought her to my job. He doesn't do it that often but I don't like it when he does. It's not that I don't appreciate seeing Lyla during the day because I love having her company. It's just that when he brings her here, she attracts a lot of attention. Everyone wants to say hi to her, tell her how pretty she is, talk to her...she just attracts attention. And Lyla hates attention and it makes her all nervous and clammy. She likes seeing me but she doesn't like all the people that come along with seeing me. "You wanna eat some lunch with me?" She nods her head. "Alright, let's go eat." I take her pacifier off my dad because she's going to need it if we go into the cafeteria. "Did you feed her already?"

"She ate some chicken fingers and french fries at the YMCA." He paused talking to his friend for a second but he's right back to it now. Every time my dad comes here, he flirts with the nurse named Michelle. She's older and I think she has a thing for my dad but the two have never officially gone on a date or anything. The first couple times he brought Lyla here to "visit me", I'm almost certain that he brought her here just so he could see his lady candy.

"I'm taking her down to the cafeteria with me. I'll bring her back up in a little." I hand Lyla her pacifier and start walking away with her. My dad will sit and talk to Michelle until I bring her back and I know he won't have a problem with the fact that I took her and left. "Is your belly full?" She nods her head and puts her hand on the back of my neck, which tells me that she's a little bit okay with being here now. She's not rubbing my hair anymore. "Here, push the number one...push it for me." I lean her down so she can push the elevator button. She pushes it and looks behind me after she's done. "Are you gonna say hi to people when we're down in the cafeteria?" I step onto the elevator and put her down once we get inside. I put her down but she's not comfortable with that and she lets me know that she's not by grabbing onto my leg and squeezing. "Are you? Are you gonna say hi?" She nods her head. "Here, hold my hand."

She grabs my hand and squeezes it. "...Daddy, looky." She twists her body to the side and kicks her leg out. She's showing me a blue and white Band-Aid with the snowman from that one Disney movie on it. "I was goin' down the slide...and I bump it. Pappy buyed me Olaf Band-Aids." Her little legs are just as dirty as they want to be. Her legs are dirty and so are her feet. She's wearing a pair of pink sandals and I can see that the bottoms of her feet are filthy and her underneath toenails are dirty too. Her toenails are painted a bright pink color but they're chipped pretty bad now. The same polish has been on her toes for a few months now because Jenna painted them for her a few weeks before she died. I could go to the store and get some of that polish remover...and maybe I can paint them over for her. I don't know if she'd like that though. She might think it's weird that her daddy is painting her nails. Or maybe she'd like it. I don' know. I'll try it tomorrow. "Wanna see my booboo?" Before I get the chance to answer, she's already bending down and taking the bandage off. It's just a little red brush burn. "See?"

"Aww, ouch. That looks like it hurts real bad. Did you cry?" I kneel down to look at it and make sure it's not dirty. It looks okay but I'll clean it out with peroxide before she leaves here. I strap the bloody bandage back on her kneecap and stand back up.

"I didn't cwy." She shakes her head. "I was a big girl."

"Were you? Dang, you're tough." The elevator doors open up and I take her hand into mine. "I can't believe you didn't cry. I would've cried." I walk her towards the cafeteria. She giggles pretty loudly. "What? I'm telling you the truth. If I would've hurt my knee like that, I would've cried. I can't believe you didn't. You're so tough." As soon as we go into the cafeteria, her grip around my hand tightens and her head falls against my thigh. I keep walking but she doesn't and I end up pulling her a little. "Come on Ly. It's alright."

"Uppy?" The pacifier starts bobbing like crazy and she holds her arms up. I bend down and pick her up. She looks around the cafeteria and puts her head on my shoulder.

I walk into the food line and stand behind Arizona's wife, Callie. Callie takes care of all the broken bones that come in here on a daily basis. If a baby breaks a bone, she's the one you'll want your kid to see. She's really good at what she does. With her tray of chicken salad in her hands, she stops talking to the blonde haired doctor in front of her. I don't personally know the blonde but I know that she's pretty well-liked around here. She's supposed to be freakishly nice. She's a general surgeon, which means that she's the primary one that does appendectomies and things like that. Callie turns around and looks at me. "Hi there, cutie." She touches Lyla's hand and to my surprise, Lyla lets her. Arizona's always telling me how much her wife likes kids. "What's your name?"

"Lyla." I answer for her because I know that she's not going to. I look over at her to see how she's doing and she seems fine. Her head is on my shoulder, she's sucking on her pacifier and she's looking directly at Callie.

"Lyla? That's a pretty name." She starts stroking Lyla's fingers and Lyla is seriously okay with it. "I like your Band-Aid, Lyla. Is that Olaf?" Lyla nods. "It's super cool. And I like your shoes too."

"Thank you." Lyla says, without any coaching from me and that makes me proud. She thanks Callie and she seems alright but I'm not surprised when she turns her head away from Callie and looks the opposite way.

"She's cute, Karev." Callie nods at me and hands the cafeteria cashier a five dollar bill to cover her lunch. "Real cute."

"Thanks." I put my hand in the middle of Lyla's back and look up at today's menu. Callie grabs her lunch tray and follows the blonde one over to a table. I take her place as next in line and approach the register. "Can I have a bowl of that spaghetti? And a water...or nevermind that, make it a Sierra Mist. And I'll take a chocolate pudding cup too." The cashier punches my order in the register and goes off to make my tray. She piles a bowl of spaghetti on it, a cup full of Sierra Mist and a pudding cup. She puts napkins, a fork, a spoon and a straw on the tray and hands it to me. I hand her a ten dollar bill. "Keep the change." It came to $9.34 so she can have the rest. I grab the tray with one hand and walk over to an empty table. I know Lyla's not going to let me put her down so I put the tray down and sit down with her on my lap. I open the pudding cup for her and hand her the spoon.

The way she holds her spoon reminds me of Jenna. I know that probably sounds crazy but it's the truth. She holds it between her thumb and index finger and Jenna used to eat things with a spoon that same way. Is it bad that sometimes I hate looking at my daughter? Because I do. I hate looking at her and seeing how much she looks like Jenna. She has the same eye shape as Jenna, the same nose...she looks just like her and I wish she didn't. I have to look away from Lyla while she's eating her pudding because it hurts.

Everything reminds me of Jenna, pretty much.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"Where to, hon?" I don't even have my duffle bag on the bus before the driver starts talking to me. He's older, probably in his mid-fifties. He has a beer gut that sticks out and hangs over his belt and he's wearing a baseball cap on his head. I yank my bag up the steps and turn around so I can answer him. When I turn around, he jumps and reacts quickly, making it a point to stare ahead but I saw him and I caught him before he started to act like he wasn't doing anything. He was staring at my ass. I was bent over, pulling my bag up the steps and while I was bent over, he was looking at my ass. I decide that I won't make a big deal over it. Before Mark's death, guys used to look at me all the time. After he died, they were all usually too mad at me to even consider me sexy but I'm still somewhat used to having them stare at me so I won't freak out on the bus driver. I have good readson to believe that if he saw what my legs look like underneath these jeans, he wouldn't find me sexy. My scars really aren't that noticeable but from where he's sitting, he would be close enough to see them. "W-where are you headed?" He stutters, his eyes now on my chest and not on my face.

"Florida." I pick my bag up and sling it over my shoulder, even though it's heavy. It's only 10:00 in the morning and it's already sort of warm outside so I just threw on a pair of low-cut jeans and a tank top. Maybe I'm showing too much cleavage...maybe my hips are a little too out in my jeans. But I really wish he'd stop looking at me. I just keep having this vision playing through my head. This vision of him locking the doors on this bus and telling me that he's not letting me off until I give him what he wants. I'm the only person on this bus so it'd make sense...and the growing bulge in his pants makes it more plausible. I have an overactive imagination though, so sometimes I just need to be ignored. I always have had an overactive imagination, even as a kid. I'd make up elaborate lies that would end up with me sitting in timeout and my mom telling me that my tongue's gonna fall out. "How much is it going to be?" I drop my bag so I can reach in my pocket and pay my fare. I think on the map I looked at yesterday, it said that a trip to Florida is between $20-$40.

"F-fourteen bucks." He looks at my face this time and smiles, showing off his yellowed teeth.

"I said I'm going to Florida..." I repeat myself because I don't think he quite heard me. There's no way a trip from Massachusetts to Florida is only fourteen dollars. "How much would that be?"

"Fourteen dollars." He says again and then it dawns on me... I reach in my back pocket and grab the wad of bus fare cash that Mrs. Robinson gave me. He's giving me a discount because he likes me. I hand him a ten dollar bill and a five loose one dollar bills, mindful to tip him a dollar extra because even though he gives me the creeps, I'm grateful for his discount and I do realize that this is his job and this is how he gets paid. He shoves the money into his money box without even counting it. "Let me get that." He springs up out of his chair and grabs my bag. I step aside so I don't have to touch him or anything. "Where do you want to sit, babe?" A chill crawls up my spine when he calls me "babe."

"You can take that towards the back." I point for him. He starts lugging my bag towards the back. I have another thought. What if he tells me that he'll give me my money back for a blow job? Or just a shot of me naked? A free ride for sex? I shake my head at myself and clear my thoughts. "Right there." I point at the seat he stopped next to. It's far enough away from him in the front for me to be comfortable. He puts my bag down on a chair and steps aside so I can sit next to the window. "Thank you." Careful not to touch him again, I slip past him and sit down in my window seat. His eyes are on my chest again but I just ignore him.

"You got a name?" He takes off his hat and runs his hands through his grayed hair. His name tag says that his name is "Phil". He licks his lips and smiles at me again.

"Lauren." I pick the first name that comes to my mind and rattle off a lie. I'm also an excellent liar, in addition to my overactive imagination. I realize that being an expert liar probably isn't a very positive character trait to have, but it's the truth. I can lie to you with ease and I can bullshit you like it's nobody's business. I can get you to believe that the sky is green and the grass is blue. I used to drive my mother nuts with my lies. I would push a TV off the stand and say that my imaginary friend, Tinkerbell did it. I grew out of the whole lying thing eventually, but the talent is still lying dormant in my body somewhere. The key to being a good liar is basing the lie off the truth. I learned that skill later on down the line, obviously.

"Nice to meet you, Lauren. I'm Phil." He smiles at me some more and looks all giddy and excited. "If you need anything...don't hesitate to ask." He winks at me and walks back towards the front. I watch him like a hawk as he retreats back to his seat, sits back down and settles in to start driving. A little piece of me feels bad for lying to him. But why would I tell him the truth when he's looking at me like he wants to jump my bones in the middle of this aisle? If he wasn't caught looking at my ass and my chest, I would've told him the truth. That my name is Jo and I think he's really nice. But he didn't even respect me enough to look at my face so why should I respect him enough to tell him my real name? For all I know, he can learn my real name and use it against me in whatever sexual fantasy he's having about me. I really ought to stop lying so much though.

Once Phil starts driving the bus, I relax a little. I lunge to the seat beside me and unzip my bag. It's pretty sad when I think about it. It's sad how everything I actually own in that big house I'm leaving behind can fit comfortably in a duffle bag. I rummage around for my very outdated iPod and produce it. I have nothing in here, really. I have my savings—that I counted and it equals out to be somewhere around eight hundred dollars. I have all my clothes, a box of tampons, a container of body soap, my cell phone charger, my iPod charger, a few blankets, a pillow, my wallet—which has all my important documents in it, the frame with my teaching certificate in it, the bags of chips, bottles of soda and the packages of Ramen Noodles I bought yesterday. And that's it. That's all I have in this bag because technically, that's all I own. If I take something in that house that doesn't belong to me, they'll just sue me again and this time, I'm not sure what they'll take.

I plug my headphones into my ears and turn my iPod on shuffle. I pull my pillow out of my bag and my red and white snowflake blanket. I situate the pillow between the window and the seat and rest my head against it. I drape my blanket over my body, kick my legs up to rest my aching hips, and turn my head so I can see out the window. I turn the volume on my music down to the point where I can hear everything around me and still hear the music as background noise. As I look out the window, I see Mrs. Robinson standing on her porch, watching the bus leave. I don't know if she can see me but just in case she can, I wave through the window. She doesn't wave back, so maybe she can't see me. She told me to call her when I get to Florida and I told her that I would. I look at the house...the house I once shared with my husband and the house I'm leaving behind. It's big and it's nice and at one point in time, it was my favorite place in the world. Now I'm leaving it. Leaving it to be foreclosed.

I can't tell if I'm glad to be leaving Chamberlain or if I'm sad because I know how much I loved this place at one point in time. The point in time where the only thing in the world I had to care about was what I was going to wear to my husband's fancy banquets. Back when people would say, "hi Jo, how's it going?" when I walked down the street, instead of looking at me in disgust. Like I'm a blemish on the perfect city of Chamberlain itself. It's a a bittersweet feeling to be leaving this place behind.

The house gets smaller and smaller until eventually, it disappears behind me. Now the house is just a distant memory instead of a constant reminder of the things I once had and eventually lost. I'm not so sure if going to Florida is a good idea. I don't know how this is going to work out and I don't know if this is the right decision for me. But I have to take this chance. When I say I want to make a new life for myself down in Florida, I don't mean that I want to go down there and find someone else, marry him and have a baby with him. Because I don't. I don't ever want to get married again and I don't want to ever be pregnant again. I just want to go, get a job and live somewhere where people don't hate me. I'm not looking for love and I'm not looking for a family. I just want to feel like I am something without Mark because right now, I'm not. I'm nothing without him and I need to be something. So I'm not sure if moving down south is going to be the answer to all my troubles but I sure2 hope it helps me out of this rut I'm in. I'm nervous to go to a new place where I don't know anybody and where nobody knows me, but I'm also hopeful.

I turn my music up just a little bit louder and close my eyes. And I wait for myself to drift off to sleep. Hopefully when I wake, I'll be too far away to even remember Chamberlain.


	6. Proud

**A/N:** This chapter is pretty long. With that being said, I think I'm going to start making all chapters a little longer. I have a lot of material to cover in this story and I don't want it to get ridiculously long like my stories have been in the past. I want to make this story 40-50 chapters if I can and in order to do so, I'm going to start putting more material into each chapter. I hope you guys don't mind.

* * *

The bus kicks up dirt and rocks as it speeds off in the opposite direction. I have so many questions left unanswered about that bus and now that it's long gone, out of my field of vision by now, I don't think they'll ever get answered. For one, I didn't think the bus would actually drive all the way through. I thought there would be pauses at rest stops or breaks at gas stations but there weren't. The only stops that were made were stops along the way to pick up other people at the other bus stops. I thought for sure that I would be told to get off the bus halfway through and get on another that would take me to Florida but again, I was wrong. Phil really did drive me all the way to Florida. No stops in between, no pauses at a rest stop for him to rest. He drove sixteen hours from Massachusetts all the way to Florida. I guess the bus has one big route. I guess it just goes around and around in a circle, picks people up and drops them off as they circle around. I watch the bus turn up a hill and after it turns, it's officially gone. "Bye, Phil." I mumble under my breath and sigh when I realize that it's really, truly gone.

I turn around and look at the bus station that I was dropped off at. The building is bricked and it's painted a shade of blue. Across the top, in lit up orange letters, it says "BUS STATION". I pick up my duffle bag, which I had set on the ground for a moment, and climb up the steps to get to the bus station's door. For some reason, my legs don't hurt at all today. I have a little pain when I climb up the steps but for the most part, they don't ache all that much. On either side of the staircase, palm trees are growing nice and tall with coconuts hanging up in the middle. The palm trees are creating a canopy to shield the bright morning sun from hitting me. I take a deep breath to inhale the scent of the air around me and I've never smelled anything quite like this. The air smells like ocean water and like it's going to rain. I look up at the sky and see nothing. Not a cloud in sight, nothing but clear blue, sunny skies. But I smell rain in the air so I wouldn't be surprised if it starts to rain later.

I wrap my hand around the cool metal door handle to open up the bus station but before I go inside, I turn around and look at the scenery once more. It's so much different than Massachusetts. There's hardly any grass around, there's mostly just tan concrete. There are no evergreen trees or pine trees either. Just palm trees. I had never seen a palm tree until about half an hour ago. We had synthetic palm trees up in New Jersey where I grew up, but I've never seen a real, live palm tree with coconuts in it until today. I don't quite know how I feel about being here. I don't know if I'm excited or if I'm nervous...or if I feel downright ridiculous being in a place that I know nothing about. I take a deep breath and walk into the bus station, duffle bag in tow. Before I go over to the service desk, I stop and look at a map that's hanging on the wall next to the bathroom entrance. Apparently, I'm in a town called Platts. I've never heard of Platts, Florida but here I am in it. Next to where I'm at, there's a town called Murraysville and then another town called Millerton. I wonder which town is the cheapest option.

I look around to see if there's anyone I can ask for help around here. I really don't know what I'm doing here. I should just go back home. I'm way in over my head here. Florida's beautiful and all but seriously, what am I doing? I'm way too far away from home. I wish I were back on the bus with Phil, even though he was creepy. I miss being on the bus, kind of. I miss it because for sixteen hours, I didn't wallow in self pity. I've never been on a bus like that, to say the least. Every state he stopped in, there was someone that got on. And for once, I wasn't the most pitiful thing on the bus. Everyone on that bus was on there for their own personal reasons and everyone on that bus was just like me. Nothing but a single bag in their hands, looking for a way to leave their world behind. There was a woman with a battered face sitting across from me for most of the ride. Her face was bloodied and she couldn't stop crying. Then, in Georgia, a mother with her two small children rode beside me. They were all dirty and the children were shivering with holes in their clothes. And they were telling their mom that they were hungry. It wasn't much, but I gave them bags of chips from my stash and a bottle of soda. I hope it helped. The mother thanked me and told me that I was a beautiful person but part of me doesn't really believe that. It was just a couple bags of chips.

I put my bag down and look around the bus station again, trying to force the memories of the bus out of my mind. I walk over to the service desk and look up at the clock before I start talking to the lady behind it. It's 2:30 in the afternoon. I need to find somewhere to sleep for the night. It's almost three in the afternoon and I just got here. I had a plan of how I wanted to spend my first day in Florida. I was going to ask around if people were hiring. And once I found a job, I was going to look around for a cheap apartment or something. And I thought I would have somewhere to stay for at least tonight because I had it all planned that I was going to have a job and an apartment by the end of the day. I'm a little bit naive sometimes though. Maybe I should find a house before a job...or should I find the job before the house? I don't know. I want to sit down somewhere and cry. "Can I help you, ma'am?" The service worker smiles at me, which forces me to smile back. "Do you need help with something?"

"Yes, um..." I close my eyes for a brief moment, trying to figure out how I can word what I want to ask. "What is the nearest major city?" That's the only way I can think about it. The only places in Florida I've ever heard of is Miami, Orlando and Key West. I've never heard of any place around here so I just need a general idea of where I'm at. "I'm not...from around here. I'm just trying to get a general idea of where I'm...at." I realize that I probably sound like a big dope but I think honesty is the best way to go.

"Oh, well welcome to Florida!" She smiles really wide. "The closest major city to where we're at right now would be Pensacola. If you're looking to get there, it's about forty five minutes north. If you're looking to get relatively close, your best options would be here in Platts or in a little town about ten minutes from here called Millerton." She points to a glass map on the counter that she's standing behind. "Millerton is right here." She points to the city and I look at it. "Are you looking to establish permanent residency or are you just visiting?" I shake my head when she says "visiting" and she nods. "So you're just looking for a place to move?" I nod. "Alright, well I recommend either Millerton or Murraysville. You don't want to live here in Platts. Platts is just a town where passersby come to rest while they're traveling, it's not exactly where you would want to reside. If you're looking to be close to Pensacola, Millerton is the town to live in. Murraysville is farther away from Pensacola."

"Um...you said it takes about ten minutes to get to Millerton? So it's within walking distance? I don't have a car, so..." I feel a wave of embarrassment wash over me. "Is there a bus that runs to this Millerton?"

"Mhm." She nods at me and turns around. When she comes back, she has two little pamphlets in her hand. "There's a Port Authority bus that'll take you to Millerton. That comes in about..." She looks up at the clock on the wall. "About half an hour if you're interested." She hands me the pamphlets. One is a bus schedule and the other is some kind of brochure that promotes this town called Millerton. "Hope I helped you out, ma'am."

"You did. Thank you so much." I take my pamphlets and walk back to where I let my duffle bag. So it looks like my new home is some place south of Pensacola, Florida called Millerton. I drag my bag over to an empty seat and sit down. I cross my legs and open up the Millerton brochure. "Ooh, there's a beach less than a mile away." I whisper to myself. I flip the page. I wonder how many schools they have in the town. I prefer to teach high school Statistics or Trigonometry, but I'll settle for elementary Arithmetic or middle school Algebra. I flip the page again. "Yeah, where are the houses for people that can't afford this crap?" I mumble under my breath as the next page is an advertisement for the luxurious houses that Millerton has to offer. The next page is the schooling, so I look at that. They have four schools within the district. They have a Catholic school that runs from Kindergarten to 8th grade. They have a regular elementary school that goes from Kindergarten to 6th grade. One middle school for grades 7 and 8 and one high school. I really hope they need a math teacher at one of these schools. Hell, maybe they'll need any other kind of teacher. I can teach anything in elementary and middle school but in high school, I can only teach math since that's what my degree is in. I can teach a Kindergarten class if they need me to. I'm desperate right now...I'll teach anything. I'll even teach seventh graders and I hate seventh graders.

What if this doesn't work? What if I can't find a job in this town and this was all for nothing? I sigh. I should probably call Mrs. Robinson. She's probably worried about me. And then I'll call my mom and let her know that I moved to Florida. She'll be surprised but she won't ask a lot of questions. Sometimes my mom is clueless. I slip my cell phone out of my front pocket and open it up. Unfortunately for me, when I open it up, I open it up to a picture of him and me. For a second, I smile and then my heart sinks. He was so handsome. And I remember this day. It was right after the city voted to replace our old mayor and he won. God, he was so happy. In this picture, he was smiling. His dark brown hair was a curly mess at the top of his head and he had his arm around my waist. His blue eyes were closed because I had said something to make him laugh. I was laughing too. And that moment was captured by a city photographer for the paper. I really miss him. I wonder what he would say if he was here. Well if he was here, I don't think he would agree with his parents. I knew Mark and I know that he would understand that I made a mistake and it was bad judgment on part. He would understand that I'm sorry and he would forgive me because that's just the kind of man he was. He wouldn't want me to have to leave our home. He wouldn't want me to have to move to Florida. He would tell his parents to back off and we'd still be together. We wouldn't have our baby, but we'd be together. Dammit, why couldn't we have switched sides? It would solve so many problems if it were me instead of him.

Before I go to my keypad and start to dial Mrs. Robinson's number, I just stare at the picture a little longer. His parents didn't know it, but Mark secretly hated them. And he hated the way they treated me. His parents never did like me. They were mad that their son, who was born into wealth and destined for greatness from the beginning, married me. Just a regular Jersey girl that only made it to Harvard on an academic scholarship. He was an Economics major and I was an Mathematics major and to them, I was nothing. If I wasn't majoring in anything science-related, I was nothing to them. Definitely not worthy of marrying their son. But the thing about Mark is that he didn't care. He didn't care that I came from nothing and he loved the fact that I wanted to be a teacher. His parents were always bashing me to him, telling him that I didn't fit the part of the mayor's wife. Said that I didn't dress appropriately, that my hair wasn't kept up well and I had no manners. But Mark liked that. He liked that I didn't wear business suits to the gas station and he could care less that I would go out in flip flops and a t-shirt to pick up groceries. His parents thought I was the devil, and I'm not being sarcastic in the least. In fact, when they were sitting across the table from me in the court's mediation room, they told me that they always knew I would be the downfall of their son. Damn the fact that I was in a wheelchair and unsure if I'd ever walk again. They didn't care that I was their son's wife. They told me that I never did deserve their son and when they sued me, they didn't even let me keep the Warren last name. I'm a Wilson again, not a Warren.

I snap out of my thoughts and put my phone against my ear. It rings twice before she answers. "I made it." I plug my unoccupied ear so I can hear her better. "Yeah...yeah, it went fast, actually. I slept for a while. Yeah, it is. It's beautiful. Palm trees around every corner, the air smells like the ocean..." I bite my lip. "Anybody realize I'm gone yet?" I smile when she says, "yes." I'm not surprised. The entire town of Chamberlain revolved around me, it seemed. "No, no luck yet. It's only 3:00 down here. Yeah, I know. I decided to stay in a town called Millerton. No, I'm waiting for another bus to come take me there. Mhm. Yeah, I'm fine with cash. I'm going to look for a place that's no more than 200 a month. ...I'm actually gonna go. I have to use the bathroom and then the bus should be here soon." I don't really want to get off the phone with her, I just need a moment. I don't think I can handle talking to her about the life I left behind. It hurts a little bit. I wasn't prepared. "Yeah...um...yeah. I'm gonna call my mom once I find a place...I don't want her to worry. Okay. Yeah. I will. Alright. Bye." I hang up the phone and slip it back into my pocket. It's 2:40. The bus should be here in twenty minutes.

Of course everyone noticed that I left Chamberlain. I can only imagine the newspaper articles that'll be written about me that I won't get the chance to see. I don't have to deal with that anymore. I don't have to deal with being pointed at and mocked when I go to the post office. And as much as that should relieve me, it actually scares the hell out of me. I'm scared to be here. Scared that I won't find a job, scared that I made a mistake by leaving. That's all I've known for the last six months. For the last six months, all I've known is sitting in the four walls of my bedroom and just...refusing to watch time pass. Now I have to actually live...and that scares me. What am I going to do if I made a mistake? WHERE am I going to sleep tonight?

What did I do?

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I dip the brush back into the bright pink bottle and when I pull it out, I wipe some off on the side of the opening. I've seen Jenna do this a few times before and I'm pretty sure she always wipes some off before she starts painting. The smell of this crap is enough to kill me. I don't know how women do this on a daily basis. This stuff smells like hell. I hold Lyla's little foot in the palm of my hand and stroke the brush across her big toenail. Over the past couple days, I really feel like my daughter and I have finally been bonding. She's actually been happy to see me, we've been laughing together and spending time together. I mean, we've definitely taken this to the next level; I'm painting her toenails. I'm a little surprised that I'm pretty good at painting nails but not really all that surprised. I'm a surgeon, I have a steady hand, so I should be good with things like this. "Pitty." She looks down at my work and wiggles her toes.

"Pretty?" I put the brush back into the bottle of nail polish since I'm done. She nods her head and keeps admiring her newly painted toenails. "You want sparkles?" I screw the brush back into the bottle of polish and pick up the other bottle that I just bought today. My dad came over and sat with her this morning while she slept. She usually wakes up around 10:00 in the morning so I waited for her to get up so I could take her to the store with me. I waited and she still wasn't awake by 11:30, so I just went to the store without her. I bought that nail polish remover stuff, new pink nail polish and some kind of sparkly nail polish that I figured I could paint over the pink stuff. "You want sparkles on your nails too?" She nods her head and puts her foot on my kneecap. Once her toenails dry, I'm going to have to give her a bath. One thing about Lyla that I don't understand (and I'm not sure I ever will) is how she has a thing against clothes. If she could, she'd walk around in nothing but a diaper permanently. She hates pants, socks, shirts, everything. And since she hates clothes, my dad let her run around outside in the backyard in just her diaper and now she's filthy. The bottoms of her feet are nearly black, she has dirt on her chest, her cheeks are filthy and she has dirt in her hair too. I don't mind if she gets dirty while playing because she can always get in the bath, but there's no way she should be this dirty. "Hey Lyla, from now on...we're gonna wear shoes when we play outside...okay?" I'll take it one step at a time. I'll start her off with shoes first, then we'll work our way up to a full wardrobe. "Okay?"

"Kay." She nods her head and watches me paint the sparkles over her pink toenails. "Daddy, I come to work wiff you?" I finish painting the sparkles over her toenails and put all the polish away. She stands up on her bed and holds her arms out. "Uppy." I grab her with one arm and hold her. "I come to work? I be good." Her fingers trace my nostrils and she pinches my cheeks. "I help you...I go."

"You can't come to work with me." I close her bedroom door and take her into my room. She doesn't sleep in her own bed anymore. Two nights after Jenna's funeral, she crawled into my bed and slept on Jenna's pillow. She said she liked it because it smelled like her mommy and she's been sleeping with me ever since. The only thing she ever does in her own bedroom is play. Her sleeping with me is just added to the list of bad habits she's developed since losing her mom. She doesn't use her big girl potty anymore, she's using a pacifier again, she sleeps with me and her shyness is nearly debilitating. It's up to me to break her bad habits but I don't think I can. I don't know how to. It's easier to just let her do whatever she wants than it is to stop her. It's not like she's running around destroying public property and cussing at me. She's just not where a three-going-on-four year old should be. "You're staying the night with Pappy. That's gonna be fun. And if you're good, I bet he'll take you to McDonald's tomorrow for breakfast."

I work the graveyard shift tonight. I haven't decided how I feel about it yet. I don't know if I'm glad that I'll get to spend all day with her and be away from her when she's sleeping or if I'm sad because I'll be too tired to deal with her tomorrow morning, until about 1:00 in the afternoon when I've caught up on my sleep. I turn on the TV so she can watch it while I get her things ready for her to stay at my dad's tonight. I toss the remote on the bed to her so she can find something that she wants to watch. She can't read, but she knows how to work the TV better than I do and she'll go through the channels until she finds cartoons. She picks up the remote and pushes the channel button a bunch of times. I open up her drawer in my dresser and rummage through it for a pair of pajamas for her to wear to bed tonight. I find her green and pink Little Mermaid nightgown and fold it up. Suddenly, the TV stops with the fast scrolling through channels and music videos are playing. I think she found VH1. "We...are nebber ebber ebber...getting back togedder. We are nebber ebber ebber ebber ebber getting back togedder ooooh..." She sits in the middle of the bed and mindlessly jabbers along to Taylor Swift. She starts humming in tune to the music for the verse she doesn't know the words to and the hums turn to little moans that she's trying to keep up with until the chorus comes back. "Weeeeee are nebber ebber ebber getting back togedder you...your friends...and me...but weeee are nebber ebber ebber ebber getting back togedder."

There's a part of me that can't believe that she's actually singing. The only person she ever used to sing around was Jenna and I've never really heard her be so verbal about it. She's literally sitting in the middle of the bed belting the lyrics out and she's not even trying to hide it. There have been a couple times where I've caught her singing and when she noticed me listening, she stopped altogether. But she doesn't even care that I'm listening. With a smirk on my face, I continue to pack her bag for tonight. "Hey Lyla, are you hungry?" I hate to interrupt her singing but I just thought I'd ask because I just opened up my snack drawer while I was looking for a pair of her socks and I have a whole bag of cheddar Goldfish in here that I haven't even opened yet. She hasn't eaten lunch yet so these could hold her over. She looks away from the TV and nods at me. I open the bag of Goldfish and hand it to her. "Don't eat them all." She shoves her hand in the bag and eats a handful of them.

I'm learning a lot about my daughter each day. I'm learning what she likes, what she dislikes, her personality and the things she likes to do. So far, I think I've got a shy toddler that likes to draw, color, watch music videos and listen to Taylor Swift. I'm just trying to be observant though. I still have a lot to learn about her. "Dada." She looks away from the TV again and calls my name just as I'm shoving pull-ups into her bag. "Where is heabben? Can we go? And see mommy?"

I pause for a second. She caught me off guard with this. I can usually tell when she's about to ask about her mother and I usually have enough time to conjure up something to tell her but I was totally blindsided by this one. I don't want her to know that she just upset me a little bit though, so I just continue packing her bag like nothing's wrong. "Heaven's in the sky...way up in the sky." I have to admit that she's been doing really well with handling Jenna's death. When she first got sick, Jenna sat her down and explained to her about what it means when people die. And Lyla had a pretty good understanding about it. She got that death meant that people go away and don't come back. When Jenna started getting worse, she sat her down again and told her that she had to go away for a long time. But she explained to Lyla that if she's good, she'll see her again one day. And Lyla was okay with that. She cried, told her that she didn't want her to go away but she was alright with it. When Jenna was about to go, she told Lyla to be good for me and she told Lyla that she had to go away. Lyla cried but again, she understood that there was nothing she could do about it. And when Jenna died, Lyla didn't ask questions. And to this day, she still hasn't asked me many questions about it.

"In the sky?" She chomps on another handful of Goldfish. "Mommy's in the sky?" She's not looking at me anymore though. She's watching a music video with a group of girls trotting around in white outfits singing about Michelle Obama and Oprah dollars. "Can we go see her?"

"Not yet. You gotta be real good and if you're good, you'll see mommy again someday. You just gotta be real good." I explain to her. It's times like this when I wish Jenna had been buried and not cremated. I wish I had a grave to take Lyla to so she actually has a place where she could pay her respects to her mother. But Jenna was very specific about how she wanted to be let go. She told me that she felt like she spent her entire life in a box and she didn't want to be that way when she died as well. She asked me to cremate her and empty her ashes into the ocean because the ocean was her most favorite place in the world...and the beach is where she met me. I kept a little bit of her ashes and put them in a necklace. When Lyla's old enough to fully understand what happened, I'll give her the necklace and she can wear it for as long as she wants to. "Let's go take a bath. And then daddy has to run back to the store for something. You can come with me."

"Kay." She drops the bag of Goldfish on my bed and stands up so I can pick her up.

 **X X X**

I was just at the store earlier buying nail polish and nail polish remover and I forgot to grab razors and aftershave. I grabbed shaving cream and I thought I had razors at the house but it turns out I didn't and I used the rest of my aftershave yesterday morning. I pick up a package of razors and look to see how many come in it. Lyla's been holding onto my hand the entire time we've been in the store, but she's been doing her own thing. Every aisle we go into, she finds something that interests her and she picks it up and tries to put it in her mouth. Sometimes I forget that she's only three with how smart she is but when her first instinct is to put something in her mouth when she picks it up, I'm reminded that she's still a baby. In this aisle, she's looking at toothpaste that comes in a pink box with the Disney princesses on the cover. I toss my razors in the shopping cart, bend down and pick up her pink toothpaste and toss it in there too. I see a smile cross her face but it fades quickly. I hold her one hand and push the cart with my free one as we leave the aisle. I tried to put her in the cart but she freaked out and told me no so I let her walk. I just didn't feel like carrying her around the store. I circle around to the candy aisle. "You want a candy bar?" She looks up at me and says nothing. She's been really good throughout this whole store ordeal, so I'm offering to give her candy as a reward. I should probably reward her every time she's good but if I did that, I'd be flat broke because it's not like she's ever bad. She's just a good kid. "Go 'head...pick something out." Slowly, she lets my hand go and like a typical three year old, she runs up the candy aisle. I grab a bag of Jolly Ranchers for myself and keep a keen eye on her while she finds something that she wants. She ends up with a big bag of gummi bears. "You want those?" She nods. "Alright, come on."

She holds her bag of candy and runs back to me. As we start walking, she doesn't hold my hand again until we're not alone in the aisle anymore. A lady wearing shorts and a black tank top pushes her cart in the aisle with us. She has an older little boy tagging along with her. He's too busy staring down at a game console to pay attention to her, but he has his hand on the cart and he's right along with her. Lyla squeezes my hand and walks very close to me. The lady gives me a polite smile and resumes her shopping. She stands on her toes to reach a bag of Hershey Kisses but she's still not tall enough. "Let me get those for you." I slip my hand out of Lyla's hand and reach up to help the lady out. I'm just trying to be nice, you know...do my good deed for the day. My dad says that me being nice is part of the reason why every single woman in Millerton drools over me. "You just need one bag?"

"Yes...thank you." She tucks her curly blonde hair behind her ear and takes the bag I got down for her out of my hand. Her eyes are wandering a little. She's looking at my arms, my legs, my arms again, my junk then back up to my face. I do have pretty big arms but they would be bigger if I didn't have to stop going to the gym. Being that I'm Lyla's only caretaker now, I don't have time to go to the gym much anymore. I used to go every day. "I should just tote you around with me all the time when I do my shopping." She gives me a flirtatious half-smile and flings her hair over her shoulder. Her son mumbles a swear word under his breath and stomps his foot at the game he's playing. "I would have him help me but he's too busy with his face in his Nintendo." She laughs that same fake laugh all women laugh when they're trying to appear all seductive.

"Yeah, don't mention it. I just like being a nice guy." I shrug my shoulders and glance down at Lyla for a moment. She's fidgeting with her gummi bears but she won't look the woman in the eye. The woman rests against her shopping cart and she tries to appear nonchalant about the way she sticks her butt out but I noticed. She's not an ugly woman by far. She's blonde, with big boobs and a decent butt but she's not exactly my type. I'm more into brunettes and I really like legs...and she doesn't have long legs. I think losing Jenna did something to me. I'm just not interested in any woman anymore. I can't even find anyone to be beautiful. I clear my throat and blatantly ignore the fact that she stuck her butt out for me to look at. "Is that all you need?" I ask.

"Yes." She nods her head. "You're um...Alex, right?" I'm not surprised that she knows my name. "You work up in the children's hospital in Pensacola... you work with my girlfriend Sara. She's a nurse there." She's giving me that flirty smile. I smirk back and nod my head. I know what's coming next because what's coming next ALWAYS comes next. "If you're not-"

"Daddy!" Lyla yanks hard on the bottom of my basketball shorts and stomps her foot. "I wanna go...NOW." She lets my hand go and crosses her arms across her chest. I wrinkle my brow. I don't know what's gotten into her. I nod my head at her but in an effort to be polite, I look back at the woman. "Daddy!" She pulls on my shorts again. "Daddy, daddy, daddy."

"Lyla, what?!" I grab her hand so she'll stop. "What?"

"I wanna go home right now." She looks at the woman I was just talking to and she has a really twisted look on her face. Her eyebrows are wrinkled, her nose is crinkled and her lip is poked out. "I hafta show you somethin' daddy."

"Alright." I bend down and pick her up. "I'll see you around." I say goodbye to the woman and turn to leave the aisle. "What's wrong with you?" I turn my head and look at her. "Huh?" Her green eyes are welled up with tears and she refuses to look at me. "What's the matter?" I push the cart to the checkout and put my hand in the middle of her back like I always do to comfort her. "You okay?" She nods her head. I think she was trying to prevent that woman from asking me out. It worked, if that's what she was trying to do. I would've said no to the woman anyway. I'm not ready to start dating. It's too soon after Jenna and honestly, I don't know if I'll ever be ready to date. Even if Lyla didn't throw a fit, I would've said no. Besides, I wouldn't date someone that she's not comfortable with anyway. I really don't think I will, but if I ever do start dating again, I'll have to feel the woman out pretty good before I introduce her to Lyla. If my daughter and the woman don't mesh well then me and the woman just won't date, simple as that. Lyla's a big part of my life and I would never put her in a position to be uncomfortable. "...You didn't like her, did you?" I look up at her again.

She shakes her head.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I've been walking around all morning and all afternoon looking for a freaking job and I have no luck. I feel so pathetic, it's not even funny. I've been sweating all day, I probably smell like crap and I am so tired of walking. On the up side, this Millerton seems like a pretty cool town. I've been walking around it for like three hours or something and I've found that everything is within walking distance so if I stay here, I won't need to worry about getting me a car anytime soon. It's really nice too. It's quiet and close-knit. While I told myself that I didn't want to live in another close-knit town to prevent anything like Chamberlain happening again, it's actually pretty okay. Everybody knows everybody, everyone seems super friendly and everyone's been nice to me so far. I went to all four schools in the district and they all told me the same thing. They told me that they aren't hiring right now, but all the mathematics teachers they currently employ are close to retirement and if I filled out an application, they'll put it on file for me and pull it once they have an opening. If I decide to stay and make this town my home, I think I'll like it here. But I feel terribly pathetic. I've been walking around begging for jobs and if that's not degrading, I don't know what is. Anyway, I've been adventuring and exploring my new home. There's a beach about a mile away from here, a library, a fire station, a police station, a YMCA with a gym and a pool, a bunch of different neighborhoods, a few restaurants, a pharmacy, a convenience store, a grocery store...it's a pretty nifty town.

With my duffle bag on my shoulder, I climb up a flight of dark brown wooden steps and before I go inside, I take a look through the glass door. There are a bunch of people in this restaurant and it's pretty lively. People are chatting, people are drinking and eating and having a good time. I didn't really want to spend any money until I at least found a house but I'm starving and I really need to use the bathroom so I'll take my chances and spend a couple bucks here at The Lobster Hut to feed myself. I open the door and walk right inside. It smells like ocean water and beer in here. It's a pleasant smell. It's pretty dark in here. The hostess podium is the first thing I see and to the right of that is a tank with a bunch of live lobsters in it. Soft music is playing and the sound of people talking is background noise. In front of the hostess podium is a sign that says, "please seat yourself". I secure my bag on my shoulder and walk further in the restaurant. There are lots of tables and booths but I choose to sit at the bar. It's not as crowded in here as I thought it might be. In front of my seat, there are a bunch of magazines and a newspaper. While I wait to be served, I pick up the newspaper just so I can learn more about my new home.

The air conditioning feels so good against my burning hot skin. I'm almost certain that I've gotten a bad tan walking around in the sun like this. While I'm sitting on the bar stool, I roll my ponytail holder off my wrist and tie my hair up in a sloppy, messy bun with it. My hair is damp from my sweat and I feel so sticky and gross. I wish I had a place to shower tonight but I thought about it and maybe after dark, I'll walk to the beach and bathe in the ocean water. It's salt water but surely it'll keep me from smelling like a foot until I have a proper freshwater shower. I open "The Millerton Reporter" and read through the headlines. This town is so boring that the front page headline is "Local Taxi Driver Suspected Lottery Winner". Call me crazy, but I sort of like the fact that this place is boring. I think I picked a nice, quiet town. Once I see that the paper is sort of boring, I turn to the classifieds section and look around at the real estate here. Everything listed is $300 or more and has two to three bedrooms. I guess they don't put apartments in the paper. Either that or they have none to rent out in this town. Suddenly, my eyes settle on one add in particular. I read it to myself. "For Sale, 811 Pembroke Drive. 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom. Best offer accepted. Contact (555)-100-5435 for more information." If only it wasn't for sale. I can't afford to buy a house.

"May I help you, honey?" An older woman with curly, light blonde hair and cheap pink lipstick on her thin, worn down lips approaches me with a notepad and a smile. "Let me start you off with something to drink. We've got Pepsi products. Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, Sierra Mist... something alcoholic if you want."

"Can I have a Pepsi, please?" I slide the newspaper to the side and pick up the menu. The ad said that the best offer is accepted. Maybe the owner will be nice and rent it to me. I can put down $500 as a security deposit but I can't give anymore than that. I need at least $300 to buy myself a mattress. I'll worry about food some other time. The waitress bustles over to the soda fountain and gets me a glass of Pepsi. She sits it next to me. "Thank you." I look through the menu and find that nothing here is cheaper than $20.00 a plate unless it's an appetizer. I'll fill up on an appetizer. "...Are you guys hiring?" I ask the waitress. It's not a teaching job...but it's a job nonetheless and if I waitress here, at least I'll have money in my pocket every day.

"I'm not exactly sure I can answer that, honey." She leans against the counter. "I can run back and ask the manager. I believe the owner is here so you can talk to him if you need to but if he's not then the manager should be able to answer you. I'll bring you back an application." She seems really nice. "What'd you say your name is?"

"I didn't, but it's Jo. Just J-O. And thank you." I tuck a sweaty strand of my hair behind my ear and continue to look at the menu. Please god let them be hiring. I just need a freaking job. I don't care what it is. Okay, I _do_ care what it is, but still...what I'm saying is that I'm pretty much desperate and I'll do anything. I'll waitress some tables. I just need a way to earn a living so I can get a house. The waitress disappears behind a set of double doors. I take a long, drowned out sip of my soda and sigh in relief as I feel the coolness rush through my bloodstream. It feels so good to have something ice cold to drink. I suck the entire cup clean within a matter of seconds and once it's gone, I turn the glass up to my face and eat some of the ice cubes. I didn't realize how thirsty I was until now. I slide a magazine over my way and flip through it. Something about someone overly rich buying a house in the Beverly Hills. Something about Britney Spears having another meltdown. Something about someone's spouse cheating on them. I turn the page. Boy, isn't that the life? You know how much money these celebrities probably get paid just to be on the front page of a tabloid? I'll let somebody take a picture of me in bunny slippers and pimple cream for $20 and these celebrities probably get paid $20,000.

"Hey just J-O." The waitress pushes the double doors back open and motions for me to come back behind the counter. "The owner would like to speak with you." I raise my eyebrows. He does? Oh please tell me I have a job. Please. I slide out from the bar stool and hop down. I kick my duffle bag underneath the stool for safekeeping and stand up straight. I hope this isn't a formal interview because I'm not dressed for this. I have on a crappy tank top and a pair of faded blue jeans. My hair is a sweaty mess, I'm a sweaty mess, I probably smell bad... I wish I was dressed for this. I adjust my clothes and go behind the counter. "He said we're not hiring, but he said he wanted to talk to you for some reason. I think he might go 'head and let you apply anyway." She winks at me and holds one of the double doors open for me. My heart sinks. They're not hiring? I have to mentally tell myself not to cry because lord knows I really want to. What the hell does he want to talk to me for then?

The waitress leads me through the doors, through a busy kitchen and through another set of doors. She holds the second set of doors open for me and I walk through them. I'm in an office now. An office with red walls, green carpets and only one desk lamp to light the room. The owner is sitting at the desk. He looks a little on the heavier side, but he has dark hair and dark eyes, hidden behind a very thick pair of glasses. He's writing something down but he won't even look at me. "Thank you, Lucille." He mumbles and the waitress takes that as her cue to go back to work. She shuts the door behind herself, leaving me alone with the owner. I stand close to the door. For some reason...and I don't know if it's my overactive imagination...but for some reason, my stomach is churning and I don't feel good. This can't be good. I can sense that something isn't right. Something...something bad is going to happen to me. I can just feel it. "Is Jo short for something?" He's still writing.

I have half a mind to lie to him just like I lied to Phil, but I already told him that my name is Jo so he'll know if I'm lying to him. "Josephine." I merely whisper.

"And you're looking for a job? What makes you want to work here?" He finally stops writing and he puts his pen down and he looks up at me. "Sit down." He motions to the chairs in front of his desk and finally, I relax a little. Curse my overactive imagination.

"...I really need a job. I just moved here and I'm looking for a house, really but I'm going to need a job if I plan on paying for my house. I-I'm a teacher, really. But I can do anything. I just really need a job." I sit down in one f the chairs and take a deep breath. It's just a job interview after all. "I'm...desperate."

"Do you have any experience?" He sits back in his chair and folds his hands while looking me dead in the face.

"No. But I'm a very quick learner and I'm a hard worker." I cross my legs to appear ladylike.

"How old are you?"

"29."

He scribbles that down and sits back again. "...I'm sure Lucille told you that we're not hiring right now." I feel tears sting my eyes again. "But I'll keep your application on file and if something changes, I'll be sure to call you. You can fill out an application out front and I'll have Lucille bring it back. I'll tell our manager, Tony to keep you in mind. I'm only in here once a month to do invoices, I don't handle the hiring. I just own the place." He stands up from his chair and waddles over to the other side of his desk. He sits on the end of his desk and looks at me from head-to-toe. "It was nice meeting you, Josephine."

"Thank you for your...time." I clear my throat and stand up. I pull my pants up and pull my shirt down and sidestep the chairs so I can leave his office. I need to cry and I'm not about to do it in front of him.

"Hold on a second there, Jo." He stops me. I turn around and stop walking. I notice his eyes fall on my chest but he looks at my face again. Something about the way he went from calling me "Josephine" to calling me "Jo" doesn't set right with me. He stands up from sitting on his desk and closes in on me. "We're not currently hiring, but I might be able to make an exception." _His hand falls on my hip and I feel a wave of heat wash over me, even though it's air conditioned in here. A bead of sweat drips down my back and gives me the chills. "For you..." He cups his hand around my waist and pulls me close to him. "I definitely think I can make an exception..." His hand slides around to the middle of my butt and I jump back._

 _"...I think I should leave." I feel a little lightheaded...I need to lie down. I stumble backwards until I find my footing. I'm dizzy. "It was nice..." I can't even speak right. "Meeting you." My tongue is tied and twisted. I can't speak right. My speech is slurred like I'm drunken._

 _"I could hire you." He winks at me and that makes my stomach do backflips. "We have some common ground here, Jo." He steps toward me again and my legs are like gelatin. I can't move them and when I do, they wobble. He stuffs his fingers up underneath the strap of my tank top and I can't breathe right now. "You want something from me and I want something from you." I open my mouth in an attempt to breathe through it. "You know, I don't see a lot of pretty girls like you come through here..." Before I can even process what's happening, the strap of my tank top ends up down, over my shoulder and my bra is hanging out._

 _"I have to go." I whisper to him and step back. "I really have to go, I can't..." I stumble to the door. "Thank you for considering me but I..."_

 _"Do you want the job or not?" He kicks off his shoes and starts unzipping his pants but I'm not sure why. I'm not sleeping with this man. "You don't even have to do much...just sit down and I'll do all the work. What do you say?"_

 _I don't say anything._

 _ **X X X**_

 _"...Can you tell me where I can find 811 Pembroke Drive?" I have my bag on my shoulder again and I'm sweating worse than I was the first time I was walking. "The lady at the gas station said if I could find the old paint shop I could find the house but...isn't this the paint shop right here?" I point to an old, rundown building. "I'm really late. The owner asked me to meet him there at 5:00 and I'm way past that." I feel bad disturbing this elderly woman who's just walking her dog but I really need to find this house before the owner thinks I stood him up and leaves. I called the number in the ad since I have a job now and he agreed to meet with me and he said we could negotiate. I asked for directions at a gas station but all I was told is to find the old paint shop. I found the paint shop and I don't see a house. You know what, I'm so over this day. I just want to lie down and go to sleep and maybe have a better day tomorrow. My first day in Florida sucked. I wanna try again tomorrow._

 _"You're right here, hon." The lady smiles at me and points towards a clearing of trees. "It sits way in the back there, that's the house."_

 _"Thank you so much." I tilt my head so I can see between the trees. I guess I wasn't looking hard enough because there it is. It sits in the back, through a clearing of trees. The walkway to get to it is concrete but it's been overtaken by vines and twigs. The house itself is small, beat down and scary looking but I could fix it up. It doesn't have to be as horrible as it looks. The woman pats me on my shoulder and continues walking her dog. I hoist my bag up again and start up the walkway. In the house, there's a light on which tells me that I'm not too late. The owner is still here and I thank god for that. Once I make it to the house, I unsteadily walk up the very unsturdy steps and dump my duffle on the porch. I knock on the door twice and let myself in. "Hello?" I call out. The house is kind of horrible but I think I can make it work. The kitchen is very old fashioned. The floors are creaky and wooden and they're discolored and rundown. There's a stove, a refrigerator and a kitchen table already in here. The cabinets are wooden too and the sink is very deep and stained. The light hanging from the ceiling is old too and it's blinking but it works and I guess that's all that matters. "...Hello?" I call out again._

 _A young man wearing a business suit with gelled down hair parted to the side comes into the living room. "Why hello. You must be Josephine Wilson?" He approaches me with his hand extended. "Walter Matthews, I'm here in place of agent Michael McKinley...he's my grandfather." I shake his hand. "You're interested in the house?"_

 _"Yes sir." I nod my head and look around. "...I'm new here. I just moved to Florida. And I just got a job today, actually. I need a place to live now." I sigh and make myself familiar with the house because it looks like this is where I'll be living. I can make this work. It'll take time and money but I will fix this up. I will make this work for myself. It's not so bad. "I saw in the paper you said that you'll take the best offer. I was um...I'm in no position to buy a house right now so I was just wondering if maybe you'd consider renting it to me? I'll...take care of everything. All leaks, breaks, water issues, heating issues...I'll take care of everything. I just need to be able to make payments on it because I can't buy a house full out."_

 _"So you're looking to rent to own?" He nods his head. "I can do that for you. Let me show you around, first." He motions for me to follow him and I do. "That was the kitchen, obviously. All the furniture in here, you're welcome to keep if you want or you can throw it away. It was left in here by the last tenant and you can do what you please with it. The furniture is only about ten years old, so it's not too old. The sink works, there's running water. The fridge is hooked up if you want to keep it. The stove runs on gas and it's hooked up if you choose to keep it. As you can see, the house is a bit of a fixer-upper but everything in here works. The heating was just checked last week and it's up to par, there is an air conditioning unit that works. All plumbing and electricity works." I nod my head. It's not so bad. It's my house, so it'll work. "This is the living room." He shows me a wide room with a yellow sofa in the corner and a rundown television set sitting on a stand. "Everything is all on one floor here..." I smile at that. I won't have to hurt when I walk up steps. "Here's the bedroom." He opens a door and turns a light on. There's a bed frame with a beat up mattress on top of it and one flimsy night stand. All the floors in here are wooden. There is no carpet. He walks me through the bedroom and opens another door. "And here's the bathroom." The bathroom is the only room in here that's carpeted, which I find strange. It has thick, blue carpeting in it and white walls with peeling wallpaper. The tub is rusty and the shower head is old fashioned. The sink is standalone and so is the toilet. It's a small bathroom but it's a bathroom nonetheless. "And that's the royal tour. It's not much, but I'm willing to-"_

 _"No, no..." I look around the bathroom some more. "It's perfect. I'll take it." I crack a smile. I did some things that I'm not so proud of today, and today was a bad day, but this house is perfect for me. It's a fixer-upper for sure, but I'll take it. It's a house. I'll have somewhere to bathe and lay my head at night and that's fine for me. "Um... I can only put down about $500 today...is that okay?"_

 _"Yeah, yeah. That's fine." He's holding a folder full of paperwork. "When are you looking to move in?"_

 _"...Can I move in tonight? I know the paperwork isn't final and I still have a lot of things I need to do, but..." I reach in my back pocket and whip out the sock I keep all my money in. "I can pay you right now... and I need somewhere to sleep tonight. Can I move in now?"_

 _"...Sure." He nods. I can tell he's not supposed to let me do this but he is and I'm eternally grateful. "Where did you say you worked at?"_

 _"I waitress at The Lobster Hut. I know it's not...a high paying job but I swear I'll make the payments. I will. I start my job in two days. And I'm only going to be part-time but I'm looking for another job as well." I'm so tired of begging today. I really am. "I'll make the payments."_

 _"...Okay, so we'll set your payments up to be about...$150 a month and that should get the house paid off in about fifteen years for you. Does that sound like your price range?"_

 _"That's perfect. Thank you so, so much." I can finally breathe. I can finally, finally breathe now._

 _"Alright. So I'll let you get yourself situated. I'll be back around 10:00 tomorrow morning to finish up this paperwork and get your legal documents. How does that sound?"_

 _"That sounds good. Thank you." I could really cry happy tears right now but I won't. I'm all cried out. I spent the entire walk from The Lobster Hut to this house crying and I'm sick of shedding tears. The agent nods his head once, gives me a "good luck" kind of look and sees himself out. When he shuts the door to my new house, I look around and sigh. It wasn't easy, but I've got myself a job and I've got myself a house. I had to do some things that I wish I hadn't but right now, I'm just so desperate. I live in a shack and I had to let someone do something to me to get a job but it's still better than Chamberlain. And plus...I don't have to see that man too often. He's only there to do invoices once a month so I don't really have to face him that often. I'm so not proud of that. But I have a job and that's all that matters._

 _I saunter over to my new front door and go out onto the porch. I pick up my duffle and drag it in the house. I shut and lock my new doors and drag my bag to my new bedroom. I sit down on the floor and start to unpack. I've got to call Mrs. Robinson and tell her that I have a job and a house already. My first day here and I have a job and house. Things are looking up already. I don't want her to think anything less of me, so I won't tell her what I had to do to get the job but I'll tell her that I'm a waitress now. I'm trying not to think about what I had to do to get my job but it's not working. I've done worse things than lie down on a desk and let a guy go down on me for a job but I still feel pretty low. At least I didn't have to let him have sex with me. At least he was satisfied after eating me out. I just hope that he doesn't tell anyone. Because the last thing I need is a negative reputation with my new start. I don't think he will because he knows that if he does tell, I'll press charges on him for sexual harassment, sexual misconduct and not to mention, rape. But I still hope he doesn't tell. I don't really think he did rape me...if I was willing...but it sounded good when I threatened him. I mean, I wasn't willing, but...I didn't stop it. I said okay. I took my own pants off, laid down on the desk and let him go down on me for half an hour. I even faked an orgasm. I'm not real sure if it was rape... but like I said, it sounded good with the threat._

 _I start taking things out of my duffle so I can properly unpack. I'll use all the furniture in here until I can afford to buy my own. It's secondhand, hand-me-down stuff but it beats sleeping on the floor. I take out my towels, my soap, my clothes, my chips, soda and noodles...and I come across a pair of scissors. I slip my fingers through the holes of the scissors and snip them. I don't know why what comes to my mind is the first thing that comes to my mind to do with the scissors but the idea won't go away now. One part of me is thinking that I should do it because I'm starting over. I'm starting fresh, I want to be a new person and this is one way to be a new person. And the other part of me is thinking about how I want to get rid of every part of my body that he touched. Every part that he pulled, ran his fingers through, told me was pretty._

 _I stand up from my spot on the floor and go to my new bathroom. I flick on the light and stare at myself in the mirror above my sink. I hate the light brown eyes staring back at me and the big, pink lips resting on my face. But maybe I'll like myself a little better after this. I put the scissors down on my sink and reach back. I pull my hair out of the bun I put it up in after I let him do that to me. My thick, brunette locks come tumbling down in luscious waves and soft curls. He said he liked my hair. He said it was pretty and he took it out of the bun I had it in. He ran his fingers through it and pulled on it. Wrapped his hand around the lengths of it and tugged. I pick up my ponytail holder again and tie my hair in a ponytail. I bring the ponytail to the side. It comes all the way down past my boobs. I adjust the ponytail holder so that it's just below my chin, the underside next to my cheek. Too short. I move it down a little so it touches my shoulder just barely. Perfect. Mark's parents always used to tell him how I never knew how to do anything suitable with my hair. They said...they said that my hair was wild and unruly, just like my demeanor, that surely wasn't fit for their son. They said I needed to learn how to tame my wild hair. I pick up the scissors and open them. I place my ponytail between the blades and start snipping. It's just falling and falling and falling...I never realized how thick my hair was. I turn my head to the side so I can see better and I just keep cutting. It all falls down in heap to the floor. I put the scissors down and look at what I've done._

 _Call me crazy, but I sort of like it..._


	7. Just A Dream

I reach up with one of my hands and push away a couple tears. I don't know why I'm crying when I know that I clearly had a daydream but for a daydream, it felt so real. Walking in this office, I couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen to me. I sat down and he started to ask me questions and I started to ease up but I still felt like something horrible was about to happen. And then...well, he told me that they weren't hiring but he said that he'd make an exception and then I just...blanked out for a moment. An exception? What kind of exception? What kind of nasty, dirty favor is asking of me? I wasn't able to breathe a second ago but I can breathe now. I take a new found deep breath and climb out of my imaginative mind. I look down at my waist to find that his hands are not at all on it. I touch my tank top and find that the straps are still perfectly intact. And him? Well, he's walking back around to the other side of his desk. "Do you want the job or not?" He asks me for the second time, the impatience more clear in his voice this time around. I'm not sure how long I blanked out. It could've been a few seconds, could've been a few minutes. But I know that the first time I heard him ask me if I wanted the job or not, I thought of one possible way this could go.

He could put his hand on my waist and coax me into having sex with him. He could take off my tank top and kiss me. He could take my hair out of the bun it's in, lie me down on his desk and go down on me, just like I imagined. And also like I imagined, he could be totally satisfied after going down on me. He could give me the job, tell me that I start in a few days, send me on my way. And I could walk off in search of the house that I can now afford, since I've got a job. I could go back to hating myself as much as I did in Chamberlain and I could start my new life in my new city off a pathetic mess. I could tell him that I want the job, but at what expense? At the expense of selling my body for a job? A job that part of me doesn't even want? That's one way this could go...and I think that's the worst possible scenario. "I mean, I really need the job, but..." I fold my arms across my chest and sniff. "I'll just..."

"If you want the job..." His voice trails off as he sits down in his desk chair. "I know it's short notice, but you'd have to start tomorrow. Lucille would have to train you and the only days she's available for training is tomorrow and the day after. She's going on vacation next week so that's out of the question. The training is usually three days, one day to learn the floor, one day to learn the cash register and the last day to learn the menu...you'd have to cram all your training in two days. But you said you're a quick learner, so..." He folds his hands and leans back in his chair. "Look, I'm a very busy man and if you want the job-"

"I do." I respond quickly, before he gets tired of offering me second chances. Well, that's a totally different outcome than the one I was planning for. I know I was just daydreaming or whatever, but it felt so real. The possibilities felt real, the aftermath felt real...everything about that felt real. I guess maybe I should've listened to my mother when she would say that I lie so much I believe my own lies. What I just envisioned in my head wasn't exactly a lie but it was something I made up and started to believe it so maybe to some certain extent, it was a lie. "I can start today, actually. I mean... I'll start today. I'll start whenever. I just really need a job. I'm able to start as soon as possible and yeah, I'm a fast learner so that's really not a problem about the two day training. I'll take the job." I lift my hand up and I'm pleased to find that sitting atop of my head is the lengthy bun I threw my hair up into. One part of my daydream that I wouldn't have minded was the haircut I gave myself in the bathroom of the house I fell in love with. But I think that part of my daydream was just me trying to appease the part of me deep down that has always wanted to do away with my long hair. I always wanted to cut my hair. Ever since Mark's parents told him that my hair was a rat's nest, I wanted to cut it. "I want the job."

"Splendid." He mumbles and sifts through a drawer in his desk. He produces a small stack of papers. "Sit." He slides the pile of papers across the desk at me and flings a pen on top of the pile. "The forms are self-explanatory. You'd be a part-timer until something full-time opens up and then you could bid on it. Part-time doesn't come with benefits and you won't be working any more than 30 hours a week but you're welcome to overtime and extra shifts if you wish." He starts running through things like he does this every day. He said that he doesn't handle the hiring here but he could've fooled me. I listen to him like a good little employee and start filling out the papers he threw at me. I think if I had paid closer attention to the pictures on his desk, I wouldn't have had that daydream that I had. Here, I was thinking that he was a forty-something year old single man that probably hadn't gotten any in a while. But on his desk is the proof. A picture of him in a tuxedo standing next to a woman in a white dress and a picture of him holding a toddler in his arms are looking me in the face. That's another one of my bad characteristics. I'm sort of a pathological liar and I'm just a little bit pre-judgmental. I tend to make inferences based off what I see. I wish I wasn't like that but I am and I've been that way since I was a little girl and I don't think there's any hope of me changing it now. "Do you have reliable transportation here, Jo?" I nod my head and scribble down my social security number on one of the papers I'm filling out. Is walking considered "reliable"?

Well, at least one part of my daydream came true. It looks like I have a job. Now I hope the rest of it holds true. Now that I have a job, I can call that number in the paper about the house. Maybe I'll be able to talk to the real estate agent about renting to me instead of asking me to buy the house full out. And now that I have a job, maybe I can put more than $500 down. I might be able to put down $600. That leaves me $200 to work with and I think I can manage that. "...How much will I be making?" I sign my name on a line and flip to the next page. I never had a job before so I wasn't exactly prepared for all this paperwork. I've done student teaching and observations, but I never got paid to student teach and observe. Being married to Mark, I didn't really need to have a job. He paid for everything. I had always planned on getting one because I didn't exactly want to mooch off his money for the rest of my life but it never happened. I never applied for a job, I never got hired anywhere as a teacher so I'm kind of new to this whole process. "Will I just be relying solely on tip money? Or will I have a steady paycheck as well? I'll be a waitress...right?"

"There are three things you could do while working here. You could just wait tables...which is where we'll start you out until you're proficient with running the floors and busing the tables. You'll collect tips from the tables you wait and only from the tables you wait. You could work behind the bar and be a cocktail waitress, which means you'll make whatever the drinks you make cost and whatever the customers tip you. And you can do both. You can work the bar and work the floor. You'll be making $2.87 an hour, plus tips." He's still rummaging through his desk for something else. "You might want to ask Lucille how much she brings home in tips though."

"Alright." I finish signing all the documents in the packet he gave to me and I hand it back to him, along with his pen. $2.87 an hour isn't going to be enough for me. I'm going to have to see about getting another part-time job in addition to this one. There's no way three bucks an hour is going to be enough for me to live on. I'll need to pay my rent with that, buy food, keep up with repairs. Eventually, I would like to invest in getting a car so I don't have to walk to work for the rest of my life, so I'll have to pay the car note, insurance, put gas in it. I need another job. Maybe Lucille will know where I can find like...a caseworker or something. Growing up being raised by a single mother, I'm no stranger to welfare. I know what public assistance is and my mom always told me that she never wanted me to have to live my life on welfare like she did. She always wanted better for me than that. But I need help and until a teaching position opens up around here, the only way I think I'll be able to survive on my own is if I find a welfare office and apply for assistance. If I could just get some help buying groceries and maybe paying my rent, I should be okay. I'll ask around for directions to the local welfare office. "Am I finished?"

"Yeah, you can go now, Jo." He flips through the papers quickly, making sure I filled everything out correctly I assume. "I know you said you would, but I'm not going to have you start today. I have to contact the manager and let him know that I did a hire in his place today, I have to let Lucille know that she's in charge of training you...there's a whole slew of things I have to do before I let you start. So you can go ahead and go for today. Come back tomorrow, ready to work around...3:00. I'll have her train you for the evening shift." He stands up and holds his hand out for me to shake it. "Congratulations." He couldn't sound more unenthusiastic, but I can't shake the feeling that I owe this man an apology. For a moment there, I thought horrible things about him. I thought that he'd actually make me trade sexual favors for a job. I feel like I owe him an apology but I'm not going to apologize. If I apologize, that would mean that I actually have to tell him what I thought he might do and without a doubt, he'd be offended that I even thought of him in such a horrible way. I wouldn't blame him for being offended.

"Thank you so much." I take his hand in mine and shake it firmly. "I'll be here tomorrow, I swear. I won't be late, I'll be early. I...I can't thank you enough, sir. Thank you so much. You have no idea how much you've helped me out." I let his hand go. "So...tomorrow, at 3:00?" He nods his head at me. "Thank you."

"No problem. It was a pleasure meeting you, Jo." He picks up my papers and ignores me, which probably means that I'm free to go. I hook my thumbs through the belt loops on my jeans and walk out of his office. Once I'm out of earshot and out of his sight, I silently celebrate by jumping up and down for a second. I got a job! My first day here in Florida and I've got a job! It's not a teaching job and it's not exactly what I thought I'd be doing but it's a job! It's already better than Chamberlain. I actually have a job here, I can make my own living, I'm not depending on anyone...I HAVE A JOB! I wipe the over-exaggerated smile off my face and push open the double doors that lead me out into the restaurant again. Mrs. Robinson is gonna be so proud of me once I tell her that I've already got a job. She'll be so happy and so proud of me and I can already hear her telling me "I told you moving was the right move for you." My mom would probably be proud of me too but I'm not telling her yet. I don't want to tell her anything about this move until I have a job and a house. If I tell her about it now, she'll worry herself sick about me being down in Florida with no house. I just need a house before I tell my mom. That's all.

"How'd it go back there, sweetie?" Lucille stops wiping off the bar counter just to look up and talk to me. "He hire you?"

"Mhm." The smile creeps across my face once again as I nod my head. "I start tomorrow at 3:00. I think you're training me. I'll only have two days to learn it but I can do it. I'm a fast learner." I open up the gate that leads back behind the bar counter. I walk back to where I left my duffle at. I pick up my duffle and put two dollars on the bar counter to cover the Pepsi I chugged down before my impromptu interview. I was hungry before I went back there but I'm way too excited to eat now.

"That's great, sweetie. I'm excited to work with you. If you need anything, just lemme know." She winks at me and starts washing the counter off again. I sling my duffle over my shoulder and pick up the newspaper ad that I saw the house in. Now that I've got a job, all I need is a house. A house and maybe some help. She said if I needed anything I could ask... I stick around the counter while washes it off, trying to think of a way to ask her this without sounding completely pathetic. I suppose there's no way to ask for directions to the local welfare office without sounding pathetic though.

"Actually..." I take a deep breath. "Do you know where I could find...like...a welfare office? Somewhere that I could like...apply for...you know...food stamps and stuff?" It's safe to say that I'm officially embarrassed, but I need help. There's no way I'm going to be able to afford to do everything I need to do without a little help. And it's only temporary. I swear I won't be living on welfare for forever. It's only until I get on my feet and find a teaching job. And when I get a car, I can expand my horizons. Maybe I could find a teaching job in Pensacola or something. A bigger city would mean more job opportunities, right? But for right now, I need to stay local since I don't have a car. Lucille just looks at me like she's trying to figure out what to say and my cheeks flush. I'm so humiliated. "I just moved here." I shrug my shoulders. "This is really the only job I could find...and it's hardly enough. I don't even have a house yet. I'm gonna need all the help I can get." I look down at the floor.

"I'm not judging." She shakes her head slowly. "I'm just trying to figure out what a pretty little girl like you is doing in a place like this. You're all alone, aren't you?" I nod my head and still look at the ground. I run the heel of my shoe back and forth over a pebble on the floor to avoid making eye contact. "...There's a social office on the outskirts of town, towards Murraysville. A bus runs towards it every morning around 11:00. Anything else?" I shake my head. "Do you have a home? A place to live?"

"No, but...there's this ad..." I open up the paper to show it to her. "They said they'll accept the best offer so the best I can do is place an offer, right? I can't really buy a house but I can make payments now that I've got a job. I was gonna call...and I was gonna ask the agent if they'd be willing to let me make payments on it. I'm working on it. It's at..." I look at the ad again. "811 Pembroke Drive. I just need to find out where that is..."

"If you sit down and wait until I'm done with my cleanups, I'll take you there." I raise my eyebrows when she says that. Really? She'll drive me there? Oh thank god. Lord knows I didn't feel like walking again. I would've, but I'm glad I don't have to. I didn't want to but I would've if there was no other way. "811 Pembroke Drive...I think that's next to the old bike repair shop. It's a pretty beat down house but it's livable. I ride past it everyday on my way here. It is pretty rough around the edges, which is probably why they're accepting the best offer. He wouldn't get much for the house otherwise." I sit back down at the bar stool while I wait for her. I think I might've found my first friend here in Florida too. "You should call and have McKinley meet you there sometime today. Maybe the deal will go through and you'll have somewhere safe to sleep tonight." She sounds pretty optimistic, which in turn makes me optimistic as well. Lucille seems like she has the kind of energy that rubs off on people.

"Okay." I take my phone out of my pocket and start dialing the number on the ad.

 **X X X**

"So you're looking to rent to own? And you have a security deposit right now?" He puts a manila folder down on the kitchen counter and opens it up. "Are you looking to sign the contract tonight? If so, I can hand you the keys tonight and you can start moving in as soon as you like." He pulls three sheets of paper out of the folder and sits them down on the counter next to the folder he just opened. Lucille was right. All I had to do was tell him that I'd take the place as it is right now and he was happy. I think he's happy to have the place off his hands and he wasn't lying when he said that he'd take the best offer. I had to haggle him on the price a little bit but he was pretty compliant. He agreed to rent the place to me as long as I take care of any repairs that might be needed. Essentially, I'm making payments to work towards paying the house off. I am renting it technically but when I pay it off, it'll be my house and my house only. He's going to charge me $175 a month to live here. I'll have to pay my own electricity bill, my own water bill and my own gas bill. By charging me $175 a month, I should be able to pay the house off in 12 years. He sits a pen down next to the papers. I feel like I've spent the entire day today signing my life away. Hopefully this is the last document I'll be signing for a while though.

I click the ballpoint pen open and start signing my name in every required space. "Yes, I'm looking to rent to own. I will take care of everything if something goes wrong and yes, I have a security deposit. I can put down...maybe $500?" I sign the first part of the contract and hand it to him. "How much are you looking for?" I ask him. The house isn't exactly like the place I saw in my daydream. On the outside, it's a lot nicer than it was in my daydream. It's a wooden house, painted a nice light blue color. The paint is chipping and the wooden steps are a bit crooked but it's nothing that can't be fixed with a little time and effort. The windows are just plain glass and they open one way. Unlike in my daydream, the windows have no shutters on the outside. It's noticeable that the place is pretty old from the outside because the wooden foundation is a little bit chippy. Like in my daydream, the house does sit in the back, away from the street which is good for me. In my yard, the grass is growing wild and unruly like it hasn't been cut in years. My front porch is painted white and it's pretty big and spacious. If I get enough money, I think I'm gonna put chairs out there. My front door is a little bit old too. It's wooden like the entire house is and the screen needs to be replaced but it's fine. Again, unlike my daydream, the house is entirely carpeted except for the bathroom and kitchen. The carpet is the same in every room; light brown and fluffy with a little bit of stains here and there. The place does come with a stove, a fridge, running water and working electricity, like my daydream had; but there's no furniture. It's perfect for me though. It needs some fixing up but it's a house and it's mine and it's some place for me to sleep. I finish signing all the papers and hand them to him.

"I'm only asking for a $350 security deposit." Also unlike my daydream, it's actually agent McKinley doing the paperwork with me. He's older, a stout little man with wispy gray hair and round glasses. He gathers the papers I just signed up and puts them back in the folder. I reach in my back pocket and grab my sock. I count out $350 even and hand it to him. He licks his finger and recounts the money I handed to him. He situates the money in the folder along with the paperwork and reaches in his back pocket. "I'll call you if anything doesn't match up. And you call me if you have any questions." He hands me the key to my house and when he does, I feel this overwhelming sense of accomplishment wash over me. "I'll be seeing you. Nice doing business with you, Miss Wilson." He nods his head once and picks up the folder off the counter.

"Thank you so much, Mr. McKinley. I appreciate this." I like how he said that it was nice "doing business" with me because in a sense, that's exactly what it was. When I first walked in here, I had a plan of how I wanted everything to go. Since I had that daydream earlier, I was expecting to walk into a house that wasn't up to par, but livable if I took the time. I was expecting to have a house that I could make payments on and that's how I wanted this whole ordeal to go, as planned according to my daydream. When I started talking to him, initially he wanted me to buy the house outright for $12,000. I told him that I couldn't do that, but I offered to make payment arrangements with him. He agreed, but he set the payments at $330 a month. I told him that I couldn't afford that and I started to walk out but before I could get a chance to, he called me back and said we could negotiate. We talked the payments down to $175 a month as long as I agreed to handle all repairs and utilities. It was a fair deal so now, this house is officially my house. Now that I think about it, he must've really wanted to get rid of this house to haggle the price down with me like that.

Mr. McKinley sees himself out of the front door and before I know it, I'm alone in my new house. Okay, so maybe things didn't go as planned according to my daydream. Like for one, I have a nicer house than the house I imagined in my daydream, but I have no furniture. The payments are a little more than they were in my daydream but again, it's a nicer house. I actually think things went better than my daydream today, because I didn't have to do anything horrible to get a job, for the most important part. And secondly, I ended up with a nicer house and a closer start date for my job. I wish I could call Mrs. Robinson and let her know how my first day went, but it'll be around 10:30 in Massachusetts right now and she goes to sleep around this time. The best thing about me having a job and a house now is that I can finally tell my mom that I moved to Florida. I look around my new kitchen and inhale the scent of my new house. It's a musty smell, like the place hasn't been cleaned or properly aired out in a long time but I might as well get used to it because it's the smell of home now.

I pick up my duffle bag and drag it through my kitchen, through my living room and through a door, to my bedroom. I was thrilled when I saw that just like in my daydream, this house is all on one floor. I don't have to inconvenience myself with steps. I flick on the light in my new bedroom and look around again. There's one window in the entire room. The carpet looks clean for the most part. The room isn't very big but it doesn't need to be for me. I'm just one person. I take my house key and walk back to my kitchen. I shut and lock up my house for the night and turn off my kitchen light. I'm really tired and I have to work tomorrow so I'd better take a shower and go to bed. Granted, I don't have to work until 3:00 tomorrow afternoon, but I want to get up early and do some cleaning and unpacking before I go. Since he only took $350, that leaves me with a decent amount of money to maybe buy myself pots and pans so I can cook for myself and I can probably put a hundred dollars worth of groceries in my fridge. I can't afford to furnish the place just yet but I think that's okay. There's nothing wrong with sleeping on the floor for a little while.

I unzip my duffle and pull out the five blankets I packed. I lie the softest one down on the floor first, then pad it with the other three soft ones. I put down my pillow and top the makeshift bed off with my favorite snowflake blanket. It's about as makeshift as it gets but it's a bed...I'll sleep fine. I start to undress myself so I can go take a shower. I wanted to stay true to my daydream by giving myself a haircut tonight because I really do want a new look for the new me, but I'm entirely too exhausted to do anything but shower, eat a bag of chips and go to bed. It's been some first day. I fold my dirty clothes up and place them neatly in a pile in a corner of my bedroom. I grab one of the containers of body soap I packed, a towel and a wash cloth from my duffle and take them into my very small bathroom. Okay, so my next endeavor is getting myself a bedroom set. After I buy pots, pans, cups, plates, bowls, forks, spoons and knives, I want to get myself a bed and maybe a dresser and eventually, a cheap TV. I think kitchen stuff is the most important right now because I have food but nothing to cook it with. I think my first day here was a success. Tiresome, but successful.

Maybe I can do this on my own. I didn't think I could, but maybe I can. My first day here and I've got a job and a house. I arrived in Florida around 3:00 in the afternoon and by 6:00, I had a job and by 9:30 at night, I had a house. My first day here and I've got a house and a job. I can do this. It won't be easy for me but it's already better than Chamberlain and I moved down here to find something better than Chamberlain had to offer. I can do this by myself. I really, really can.

At least I hope I can.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I think it's going to rain today. I can tell as soon as I get out the car to go in my dad's house and get Lyla that it's going to thunderstorm, which is weird because when I got in the car as I was leaving work, the sky was clear in Pensacola. But as soon as I got into Millerton, the sky was overcast and the air got cool and the smell of rain is lingering in the air. I lock my car doors, even though I'll only be in here for a few minutes and jog up the steps to get to his front door. I knock twice and open the door. He always leaves the door open for me when he knows I'm coming to get Lyla so the fact that she door is open lets me know that he's awake and he's expecting me. I walk right through the door. The kitchen light is on so I walk towards the back. My dad is sitting at his kitchen table staring a cup of black coffee down and smoking a cigarette. For a split second, I think about yelling at him for smoking while my daughter is in the house but I'm exhausted and I don't feel like having this argument with him while I'm tired. I just wish he'd respect my wishes and stop smoking around my kid. "Hey pop." I mumble and rest against the door frame. I'm so tired. He blows out a puff of smoke and I wave it away. "How'd she do last night?"

"Fine." He snuffs the flame out on his cigarette and stands up. "She woke up crying last night around...2:00. I fixed her a bowl of cereal when she got here last night and we watched cartoons until she fell asleep. She was out by about...11:30, maybe 12. She woke up crying for you, actually. She said she wanted you and it took me a little while before I got to calm her down. She went back to sleep and she's been asleep ever since. I didn't have to change her during the night. She wasn't wet or anything. She did good." He takes her backpack that I packed for her off the back of one of the chairs and hands it to me. "She's upstairs in the guest bed...you want me to go get her?"

"Nah, I got her." I put the backpack on the door handle and climb up his stairs. Hearing that she cried for me in the middle of the night last night hurts. It makes me wish I was there for her but of course, I wasn't. As soon as my daughter and I start to bond, I had to leave her and now I find out she woke up asking for me. If I wasn't working the graveyard shift I would've been there. She sleeps in the bed next to me every night so if she would've started crying, I would've woken up too and she wouldn't have had to miss me. I open the door to the guest bedroom and sure enough, there she is. She's buried in a sea of covers and her head is laying on a pillow. Her mouth is gaped wide open and her pacifier is on the pillow next to her mouth so I'm thinking that it fell out while she was sleeping. Her left hand is underneath her chin and her right one is cradling a multicolored stuffed lion against her body. If I listen close enough, I can hear her breathing and it's kind of like she's snoring but Lyla doesn't snore so I'm thinking she's coming down with something. That might be why she was crying when she woke up last night. She might've been crying because she's not feeling well. "Lyla..." I pull the covers off of her and rub her back. Her eyelids flutter open and she looks dead at me but sighs and closes them again. "Hey sweetness..." I pull the covers all the way off her and pick her up. She whines like she's in the beginning stage of crying. "No, no tears...it's me." I put my arm under her butt to support her and let her lie back down on my shoulder. She starts flat out crying. "Shhh...no, come on...no tears." I bend back down to the bed and grab her lion. "Look, here's Lionel...I got Lionel for you." I give her the lion. "You ready to go home?" She rests her forehead against my neck and I feel how hot she is. "Yeah, you don't feel good..."

I carry her downstairs and grab her bag off the door handle where I left it. Like I said before, sometimes I forget that Lyla actually is a baby because she's so high level and smart but when she cries, I can still hear the baby in her cry. When we get home, I'll give her some orange juice and fever reducer to take her fever away. If she's not better by tomorrow morning, I'm calling off work. I work tomorrow afternoon from 3-11 but if she's not better by about 12:00 noon, there's no way in hell I'm going to leave her sick with my dad. "She's crying again?" My dad comments when I bring her downstairs. Lyla is lying on my shoulder, wailing and jabbering about something inaudible. I can usually tell what her baby babble means but right now, all I'm getting out of her is "Ehhhme...nah nah." I don't know what that could possibly mean. She could be asking for a banana or she could be saying "night night". My dad rushes over to us and puts his hand on her back. "What's the matter, honey?" He strokes her hair downward. "She's been crying like this all night, Alex." He rubs her arm. "Maybe you should leave her here instead of dragging her out and throwing her in the backseat? She should lie down..."

I'm really trying not to flip out on my dad but I'm struggling with it right now. I'm so tired of everyone telling me what's good for my daughter. Between him and my mother, I'm starting to get annoyed with it. Okay, I might be a little clueless on what to do with her sometimes but I HATE it when they to act like they know what's best for Lyla and I don't. I wish he could get his hands off of her, stop telling me that I should do this and do that with her and let me handle it. I can handle my own kid. I just want them to stop trying to parent her. "She's fine dad...just a little sick, that's all." Respectfully, I turn Lyla away from him so he'll stop touching her back. I don't want him touching her for some reason. "I'm gonna take her home and get her some medicine. She'll be back to sleep in no time."

"Leave her here, Alex." I roll my eyes and suck my teeth. Why would I do that? I didn't see her all night. The last thing she needs is to wake up without me by her side and she'll think that I forgot all about her. She's perfectly fine going home with me. "You're all tired yourself, you worked late last night. You don't need to sit up worrying about her when you've got some sleep to catch up on yourself. And the air out there looks like it's going to rain so if she is sick, you don't need to drag her out in that. Give her here. I'll take her back upstairs and lay her down." He puts his hands around Lyla's waist to grab her off of me and that's when I just lose it.

"Dad, stop." I shove him off of her and turn Lyla away again. "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of her while she's sick. I wish you and mom would stop treating me like I'm an incompetent father. I'm not stupid and you don't always know what's good for her. I'M what's good for her. She just lost her damn mother and I'm not about to make her feel like she doesn't have a father just because you and mom want to go on some sort of power trip! She's my daughter, I'm her father, what I say goes and I SAY that she's going HOME with me to lie down in MY bed with ME. If you don't quit acting like you're the parent and I'm the babysitter here, I'm done bringing her over here. I'll take her to daycare for all that. Back off. I appreciate the help but when I say step off, STEP. THE. HELL. OFF." He just stands there and looks at me with a dumbfounded look on his face. "...I work tomorrow from 3-11. If she's not feeling better by 12:00 tomorrow afternoon, I'm calling off. If she's feeling better, I'll drop her off at 2:00." I open the front door. "I'll see you later dad." I mumble that last part and close the door behind me and Lyla. I situate Lyla to lie down in the back seat of my car for the five minute ride home and get in my driver's seat.

I feel bad for yelling at him like that but enough is enough. When Jenna first passed, I understood him and my mom keeping a watchful eye on me. The death was fresh, I was a newly single dad, I was learning how to care for my daughter on my own and I actually needed the help. But it's been six months and I'm fine now. They can both back off now. I had to yell at my mom too. She lives down in Murraysville, but she was up my house every day telling me how I needed to keep up with Lyla's hair, make sure she had clean clothes, make sure she was eating right, make sure I knew how to bathe a little girl properly...all this obvious stuff. And what really threw me over the edge is the one day , Lyla was sitting at the kitchen table eating her usual french fries and Mountain Dew. Now, I know that french fries and Mountain Dew isn't really the ideal nutritious breakfast for a toddler but at the time, Lyla wouldn't eat ANYTHING unless it was french fries, lasagna or Mountain Dew. So in an effort to keep my child from starving to death, I fed her fries and soda for breakfast. Well, my mom took the soda away and Lyla threw a fit. She replaced the soda with apple juice and Lyla threw the sippy cup on the floor and cried because she didn't want it. I told my mom to stop being a bitch about the soda and of course, Lyla repeated after me and called my mom a bitch. She didn't know any better. She was just repeating what she heard me say. My mom knew that, but she still smacked my daughter in the mouth for saying it and I flipped out on her. I mean, I really let my mom have it. Long story short, that's why my mom doesn't come around much anymore.

I do feel bad when I yell at my parents that way but it's the only way they ever take me seriously as a father. I know I'm not a good dad right now but I could be if they would just step off and let me do this on my own. I'm never gonna be a good dad if they don't let me be one. I park the car in the driveway and get Lyla out of the back seat. I carry her into the house and like I knew she would, she fell asleep on the car ride home and she's still fast asleep. "Lyla..." I shut the front door behind the two of us and lock it up. I go straight to the kitchen. "Lyla, wake up...wake up." I rub her back and she lifts her head. As soon as she's awake, the whining starts again. "I know honey, I know..." Did I just call her "honey"? I never call her that. It like...slid out and it felt natural. I don't know what just happened there. "Will you take medicine for daddy? And drink some juice? Then we can go to sleep, just me and you..." She nods her head and I notice that she's pulling on her left ear. She's holding it as if it hurts and pulling on it like it's itching. "...Let daddy take a look in there." I put her down on the counter. She puts her head down like she can't hold it up and starts crying. "I'm sorry...let me look though." I push her hair away from her ear and tilt her head downward so I can look in her ear canal. Just like I suspected, it looks infected. I can't see real good without my light and my scope but it looks like it's full of pus around the edges and it looks wet inside the canal. Probably happened when we were at the beach. She probably got some water down in there that didn't drain well and it got infected.

"Neh neh meh." She holds onto the ear that's bothering her and looks at me with tears streaming down her cheeks. She holds her arms out for me. "Dada?"

"Hold on." I go to the cupboard and get her sippy cup. I'll get her some orange juice and I'll give her some Benadryl to put her to sleep. I'll write her a script for Ammoxicillin and go fill it later. I fill the cup up with orange juice and squeeze some liquid Benadryl up with the dropper I keep in the drawer next to the sink. Now that I think about it, how dare my dad try and tell me that he'd keep Lyla while she's sick. What nerve he has. I'm a frickin' Pediatrician for crying out loud. I do this for a living. "Here honey." I shove the dropper in her mouth and like a good girl, she sucks it out of the dropper while I squeeze it. "There we go..." I put the dropper in the sink and hand her the cup. "Now we can go to sleep." I pick her up and she lies her head down on my shoulder.

I don't want to jinx it, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of this single dad thing.


	8. Alright

**A/N:** I wanted to further apologize for pissing everybody off with chapter 6. I realize that I lost a few readers after that chapter and I just want to say thank you to the people that stuck with me. So to say sorry, I tried to make this chapter really good. hope you guys like it.

-rae.

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I was right about the rain today. Soon after I gave Lyla her medicine and put her down for a nap, it began to rain. I was beyond tired from working all night last night and not being able to sleep but once Lyla was asleep, I had decided that I wasn't going to go to sleep. I had plans to go clean up the bathroom, throw Lyla's bed sheets in the washer, clean up her bedroom and fix her something for lunch so she'd have something to eat when she woke up from her nap. But just as I had gone into the bathroom to start cleaning it up, I heard the rain beating on the windowsill and it made me realize just how truly tired I was. So instead of cleaning, I ended up taking a shower, putting on a pair of pajamas and going to bed right along with Lyla. I just woke up about twenty minutes ago and while I feel refreshed, I also feel like I need to go back to sleep for a little while. I don't feel like I've got all my sleep out. I probably should get up soon though because since I took a nap instead of doing all the things I had planned on doing, my to-do list is pretty full. First and foremost, I want to give Lyla a bath and then maybe take her down to McDonald's or something for lunch. She needs to eat if she's going to take some antibiotics for her ear infection. I hate feeding her takeout all the time but today just isn't a day where I feel like cooking so I'm thinking McDonald's for lunch and I might take her down to The Lobster Hut for dinner later. Another thing I've learned about my daughter is that she actually likes shrimp and crab legs. She doesn't like lobster tail, oysters or any kind of fish but she'll eat an entire skewer of shrimp by herself and an entire pound of crab legs and butter. She's not feeling well so maybe some shrimp and crab for dinner will make her feel a little better.

Speaking of Lyla, she's still lying fast asleep on my chest. The fact that she's still sleeping is a direct indication that she's not feeling well. She never takes naps that last longer than an hour. We got home from my dad's house at 7:15 in the morning and I'd say she was asleep by 7:30, no later than that. It's going on 1:00 in the afternoon and she's still sleeping. I hate to wake her up but I have to. Even if I left her asleep while I got dressed, she'd still end up waking up anyway because she's on my chest right now and I'd have to move her. I put my hand against her back and rub it in a circle. "Lyla..." She doesn't budge. She's lying on her stomach and her head is right in the middle of my chest, turned to her left side. Her cheek is smashed against my chest and her mouth is open just a little. "Lyla, wake up. Wake up." I pat her back instead of rubbing it. Her heavy breathing stops and I watch her eyes blink twice. "There we go." I mumble. She picks her head up off my chest and turns it, only to look me in my eye. Her eyes are squinting, she looks a tad bit angry and her hair is sticking to one side of her face. She has naturally straight hair, so it's always going straight down her back but right now, it's sticking up. She looks so mad. "Good morning. You have a nice nap?" I fix her hair so it's lying down. She blinks again and her eyebrows wrinkle harder. "Here." I pick her pacifier up off the bed next to where we're lying and pop it in her mouth. It takes her a minute to catch up to the fact that I stuck a pacifier in her mouth and it takes her a moment to start sucking on it. "Did you have a nice nap?"

Her mean face softens up a little bit and she yawns, all the while keeping the pacifier in her mouth. Lyla's a professional at multitasking with the pacifier in her mouth. She can yawn with it in, talk with it in, sleep with it in, laugh with it in, cough with it in, sneeze with it in...it should be considered a talent. "Ehh me...nap." She clonks her head back down on my chest, which makes me laugh. When I start laughing, she brings her two tiny hands up and smacks them over my mouth. I guess she wants me to shut up. I don't know where she got the love to sleep from. I like to sleep and Jenna loved to sleep too so it's hard to say exactly which one of us she took after with that one. Lyla doesn't like to be put to sleep. When it's her bedtime, she fights me on it and she makes up a bunch of excuses as to why she can't go to sleep yet. She'll tell me that she has to pee, she wants a drink of water, she's hungry...the list goes on. She hates to be put to sleep but when it's time for her to wake up, she wants no parts of that. She doesn't want to be woken up, she wants to sleep and she'll fight you over waking up too.

"If you don't wake up, we can't go eat. I know you're hungry..." I stuff my hands underneath her armpits and lift her up. "Wake up...we can take a bath and then go get something to eat. Okay?" I hold her up in the air while I lie down flat on the bed. Her eyes are still closed and she's not paying me any attention. "Lyla...wake it up." I toss her up in the air lightly and catch her armpits in my hands. She opens her eyes and smiles through her pacifier. "You ready to wake up now?" She puts her feet down on my stomach and nods. I hold her hands instead of her armpits while she stands on my stomach. "Where do you wanna eat? You want chicken nuggets from McDonald's or a hamburger from Burger King?" Her pull up is hanging pretty low so while she's standing on me, I sit up and lie her down on the bed. I really ought to start potty training her again. It's not right how she has to sit in her mess while she waits for me to change her diaper. I peel the sides of her pull up open and take it off of her. "McDonald's or Burger King, Ly?" I wrap the soiled diaper up and as I get out of the bed to grab another, she crawls over to the edge of the bed and slides down. "Lyla, come here. Come let me put this on you." I hold up a pink pull-up. She's standing in front of the TV, holding the remote and trying to turn it on. All I see is her naked buttcheeks. "Lyla. Come here." She turns on the TV and starts looking for cartoons. It's clear that she's not going to walk over to me so it looks like I'm gonna have to go to her. I take the diaper over to where she's standing. "Put your feet in here." I hold it open for her.

"No." She shakes her head and finds some princess cartoon on TV to watch. I should've known she wasn't going to act right while I put this diaper on her. Like I said, she hates clothes and when she's given the opportunity to be naked, she takes it and runs with it. "Daddy, we go to McDonald's. I get ticken nuggets wiff lots of sauce." She stares at the TV and not at me. She's talking to me but her attention is on the TV instead. I pick her up and stick her feet in the holes for her pull-up. "Noooo!" She wriggles away from me. "Daddy, stop it!" She leans back and kicks her feet. "No diapy daddy!" I force her feet into the holes and pull it up. "No!"

"Sorry but I can't have you walking around with your business hanging out." After her flipping out on me for trying to put a diaper on her, I decide that it's probably best if I wait to bathe her until later. She's already sick and I don't want her having a fit when I try to put clothes on her after getting out the bath. "You should want to cover your peach up. What'd daddy tell you about that?" I grab a pair of shorts and a t-shirt for her to put on. To my surprise, she behaves herself as I put her shorts and her t-shirt on her. "Huh? What'd I tell you about walking around naked all the time?" I smooth my hand over her hair so I won't have to make her sit still long enough for me to brush it.

"Only daddy see me nakey." She leans against my lap while I fix her hair. "And only daddy gimme kiss on the lips...or gammy and pappy." I nod my head and kiss her on her cheek. She reaches one of her hands up and touches my cheek when I kiss hers. I told her that a little while ago while I was giving her a bath one day. It was back when my mom was still coming over my house religiously to help me take care of her. I took her outside so she could play and she stepped on a flower that a bee was resting on and it stung her. At first, I didn't know what happened. All I heard was Lyla screaming and crying and when I picked her up to see what was wrong, she wouldn't tell me. She just cried and she wanted my mom for some reason. So I gave her to my mom and she told my mom that a "buzz buzz" stung her and "she couldn't tell daddy where" because it was a bad place. Turns out the bee stung her on her chest. She had a really bad welt across her left chest and she said that she couldn't tell me because boys aren't supposed to see that stuff. Later that night, I made sure I was the one that gave her a bath. I told her that it was okay for daddy to see her naked but if any other boy wants to see her naked then that's a no no. I explained to her that NOBODY is allowed to touch her "peach" and that grammy and pappy could see her naked too but only the three of us could and she understood.

I don't really like the fact that I had to explain all that to my three year old but there are some pretty sick people out there in the world today and I just want to make sure she knows the difference between "good touch" and "bad touch". She knows what a bad touch is, she knows that I'm the only boy that gets to kiss her on her lips and she knows that nobody is supposed to see her naked and it's a shame that in today's society, three year olds have to know that but my three year old knows and it makes me feel better that she knows. I think I'd end up in jail if something of that nature ever happened to my daughter and quite frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm perfectly content with going to jail over my daughter. I pick her up and turn off the TV. "So you want chicken nuggets?" She nods her head. "You want to go eat at the lobster tank tonight?" I call it the lobster tank because the only thing she associates with The Lobster Hut is the live lobsters swimming around in the tank when you first walk in. She nods her head again and rubs my cheek. "What? Does daddy need to shave?" She shakes her head and puckers her little lips. She kisses me on the cheek and puts her head on my shoulder.

I don't want to say anything that'll prevent that from happening again in the future, but I'm honestly a little bit shocked that she did that. That's the first time she's ever kissed me on her own free will. Every time she's kissed me, I had to ask for it or tell her to; mostly for goodnight purposes and such. The only person I ever witnessed her kiss randomly like that is Jenna and even then, she didn't do it that often. And it was like she thought about it before she did it. She rubbed my cheek first and then she decided to kiss it. It's like she thought about doing it, decided it was okay and then did it. I hold her on my hip and walk down the stairs with her. I stop at the shoe caddy behind the door and put her down. I don't even have to tell her. She just puts on her pair of pink sparkly sandals and waits for me to put my own shoes on. Granted, her pink sandals don't match the red t-shirt and red shorts she has on but I won't make her change them. It's already a pretty big feat that she put her shoes on without a fight and without instruction. If I make her change them to something that matches, she might not do it ever again. I pick her back up and open our front door.

I think it's going to be okay being just the two of us. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing in this world I wouldn't do just to have Jenna back in our lives because she was literally the glue that held everything together around here. She had everything and everybody on a schedule, Lyla peeing on the potty, Lyla going without a pacifier until bedtime, she kept my head on straight...it's safe to say that both of us miss her like hell. But if it's just me and Lyla for the rest of our lives, I really think it's going to be okay. Things are going well right now and I don't anticipate them getting any worse. I think they'll only get better from here. At first, I was nervous about how I was going to raise a little girl on my own without her mother but I think I can do it. I'll find a way to explain to her about the birds, the bees and what to do when she gets her womanly stuff. I'll help her out for the prom, I'll dry her tears with the boy troubles and stuff. I can do this. Sure it'd be easier if I had a mother for her but I can do it. It'll just be the two of us against the world and you know what, we'll make it. I close the front door behind the two of us and start walking down the steps to get to the car. I turn my head a little and look at her. She has her middle finger and her ring finger in her mouth and her index finger is stuck up her nose and she looks comfortable laying on my shoulder. Yeah, I can do it. It'll be just me and her and it'll be great. Not perfect, but okay.

"Hey Alex!" I hear someone scream my name from across the street so I look over there to see who it could've been. I sigh when I realize that the only person it could've been is Mrs. Jensen. It's like she sits there and waits for me to come out of the house so she can talk to me about stuff that I really don't care about. She was Jenna's friend though...and that's the only reason why I put up with her. "Come over here for a second! I've got something for you!" I keep Lyla in my arms and reluctantly walk across the street. Usually when she says she has something for me, what she means is that she has something for Lyla and that something is usually in the form of a baked good. I'm prepared to receive a container of cookies or something of that nature. Lyla turns her head away from the direction of Mrs. Jensen and looks back towards our house. The only time she's not shy around Mrs. Jensen is when she's playing with her dog. I thought about getting Lyla a dog a few times before but I think I'm gonna wait until she gets old enough to help me take care of it. When we get over to her gate, Mrs. Jensen comes down off her porch and hands me an orange and blue container of sidewalk chalk. "Here you are. Give that to baby girl. I was cleaning out the shed out back and I found it...thought she might like it."

"Thank you." I take it off her and nudge Lyla. "What do you say, Ly? Tell her thank you." Lyla keeps her head turned and shakes it. I know Mrs. Jensen won't think that Lyla's rude for not saying thank you and for not looking at her because she's used to it. She knows that Lyla's not a brat or anything and she knows that it's just her shyness. Sometimes Jenna would bring Lyla to her book club meetings and everyone in the club got to know Lyla and they all know that she's very shy but sweet when you actually get her to talk to you. Her shyness wasn't as severe as this back when Jenna was alive but still...Mrs. Jensen understands. "She appreciates it. She's gonna have a lot of fun trying to write on my walls with it." I chuckle. Mrs. Jensen reaches out and touches Lyla's hair and Lyla squeezes her arms around my neck really tight. I think she thinks I'm gonna let her take her and that's why she's holding onto me so tight. "You're fine, Ly." I kiss the top of her head and she loosens up a bit.

"She's such a precious little thing...She's a doll, Alex." She rubs Lyla's hair for a little while longer before she lets her go. "Oh, did you see that someone actually moved into the McKinley place?" I raise my eyebrows to seem interested. "Sure did. I was talking to Woody from down the street and he said he heard that he's renting it out. Said the ad in the paper was accepting the best offer and I guess the best offer was to rent it. I haven't walked past the place just yet so I don't know who in the hell he rented it to but Woody said he saw someone coming outta there. Said a little girl moved in there and she isn't from around here. I just hope he didn't rent it to some young girl that wants to do nothing but drink and party. That's not what this neighborhood needs."

"I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens." I hate pretending to care about what she says. I feel bad when I just pretend to care but really, what she talks about is boring. What do I care that someone moved into the McKinley place? The place is a dump so whoever it is that rented it is either desperate or looking for somewhere to run a meth lab. Things are quiet between Mrs. Jensen and I. I can tell that she's waiting for me to engage in some juicy conversation about how the girl that moved in there is probably into partying and drinking and drugging. So I clear my throat and open my mouth. "He say how old the girl was? Or...what she looked like?" I glance down the street to where the old McKinley place is. I know where it is but to the naked eye, it's not visible until you walk down the street and look way in the back.

"He said she looked to be about 20, maybe 22. He said...he said she has short brown hair and that's all he said. We don't need someone that young in this neighborhood, you hear me? Everyone here is established, quiet, they do their own thing. We don't need some youngster disturbing the peace. You're the youngest one in this neighborhood Alex and you're what? 30? We don't need some 20 year old party girl." She goes off on a mini rant and a small part of me is annoyed. She's partially right, about me being the youngest one in the neighborhood being 30 and all but I don't think it's right how she just assumes that whoever the girl that moved in is, is just here for partying. There's not much you can do in Millerton to party so I highly, highly doubt that she's into partying and drinking and doing drugs. For all she knows, she could be a college student up in Pensacola. That's what I don't like about living near old people. They're all so judgmental and interested in the gossip and stuff like that. "I think I'll go introduce myself a little later...let her know that this is a quiet neighborhood and we don't want disruptions. Someone should let her know that there's a baby in this neighborhood and the baby doesn't need to be around loud music, alcohol and illegal stuff. She needs to respect Lyla and her bedtime and stuff."

I don't think that's a good idea. The poor girl didn't even get a chance to cause a disruption yet and Mrs. Jensen is already going to go tell her off about it. She's gonna make the girl up and move before she even settles in. "Well yeah...If there's ever a problem with Lyla, I'll go down there and knock on the door but I mean...I guess maybe we should just give her time to settle in first." I shrug, trying to find a way to let her know that I disagree but I disagree very respectfully. "We should probably head off now. I need to take her to grab something to eat for lunch and she's battling an ear infection so I gotta go get her prescription from the pharmacy...so we're busy. It was nice talking to you though...and thanks for the chalk."

"Anytime. Bring that baby over here to play with Gibby sometime." She rubs Lyla's back in a small circle. "I hope you feel better sweetheart." Lyla coughs softly in my ear and continues slurping on her fingers. I think it's funny how everyone in the neighborhood completely adores Lyla but Lyla could care less about any of them. They're always asking me about her, calling her "sweetheart" and "sweet pea" and stuff like that. They'll always give me toys for her and candy that she might appreciate but the only person Lyla is interested in is me and sometimes Mrs. Jensen's dog. I think when she gets older she'll warm up to her neighbors but as of right now, she could care less.

I walk back across the street to get Lyla situated in her car seat. I really gotta get some medicine in her system though. She's starting to cough, which means the infection is pretty deep in her ear. It's nothing that a little oral antibiotic can't fix but I want to catch it before it gets so deep that only ear drops can treat it. Lyla does pretty well with oral medication but I know that if I have to put drops in her ear, she'll have a heart attack. I put her in her seat and strap her in. "You excited about your new sidewalk chalk?" I put the pail of chalk down on the seat next to her. "We can play with it for a little while when we get home from McDonald's if you want. Don't get chalk all over daddy's car though." I shut the door and get into the driver's seat. "Are you okay back there, sweetness?" I look at her through the rear view mirror and catch her tugging at her ear. "Is it itchy, baby girl?" She nods her head. "Aw, okay...daddy's gonna get you some medicine for that. Try not to pull on it." I turn the car on and back out of the driveway. Since I know that she likes music, I turn up the radio in hopes of taking her mind of the fact that her ear is itching. It works, because she starts singing.

"Leg night...washin...telabision.." She's swinging her feet and looking out the window. She listened to me when I told her not to pull on her ear, but she keeps rubbing her shoulder against it and I feel so bad. Her ear must really be bothering her. I'm a grown, 30 year old man and I know when I have ear infections, it itches and hurts like hell. I can only imagine what it must be like for her. "I weally weally weally weally weally...weally like you." She covers her mouth and coughs into her hand. I drive slowly as I pass the McKinley place. I don't see anyone outside of it but it does look like there actually is someone living there. There door is open, there's a light on and I can see movement in the kitchen. I wonder why I don't see a U-Haul truck or anything of that nature. Unless the girl moved everything in yesterday while I was at work. I'm not going to pass judgment until I actually see the girl and interact with her at least once but I do hope that she's not a hardcore partier or anything like that because I do have Lyla to think about.

But who knows? The girl could be a quiet little nobody for all we know about her.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"Yeah you show me good lovin'...make it alright...need a little sweetness in my life." I shake my hand dry and tamper the volume button the cheap ten dollar radio I bought down at the superstore this morning. I hum the rest of the song and continue scrubbing my kitchen floor in a circle. It doesn't smell like musty old wood in here anymore, like it did when I first came in here last night. Instead, it smells like Clorox bleach and Lysol cleaner in here. I opened up the windows to let some fresh air in and that helped weed out the musty wood smell too. I just got back from the dollar store not too long ago. I thought I might have overspent a little bit at the store, but I was pleasantly surprised at the check-out when I found that I only spent $153. I got myself some pots, pans, bowls, silverware, plates, dish detergent, a dish drying rack, a lamp for my bedroom, bleach cleaner, floor cleaner, toilet paper, a new toilet seat and a basket for my clothes. That's all I had enough to buy so far but I really think my place is coming along. I got on my hands and knees and scrubbed every floor in this house today, including the carpets. I wiped down my baseboards with bleach, I cleaned my entire bathroom really good and installed my new toilet seat, and cleaned my windows with window cleaner. Lucille from work told me she'd let me borrow her vacuum cleaner. She's gonna give it to me when we get off of work tonight. She's coming to pick me up at 2:30 to take me to work.

Call me crazy, but...I'm kind of happy. I live in a dump, I slept on the floor last night, my legs are aching like crazy, I have a kink in my neck and I haven't eaten anything that didn't come from a bag or a package in a really long time, but I'm happy. I have my own place, I'm getting ready to go to work and I feel really good. I talked to Mrs. Robinson when I woke up this morning and told her all about everything, including the bit about me having to sleep on the floor. She offered to send me enough money to buy a mattress but I told her no. I can't take anything else from her. I didn't even use all the money she gave me for bus fare, so how could I take more money from her? She told me she was glad that I'm doing okay and she told me to call her when I get off of work tonight. I also called my mom. I told her that I moved to Florida, I told her that I have a house, a job, no furniture and a cute new haircut. She cried for half an hour. She told me she was angry with me for not telling her that I was just up and leaving Massachusetts, she told me she could kill me for hacking off my beautiful hair that she worked all my childhood to maintain and she told me that she loved me and she was worried about me. She sent me $400 in the mail and that was non-negotiable. I didn't want her to send me anything because I know my mom is very far from rich but when I told her no, she used my full name against me and told me that "I'm going to take that money and buy myself a bed or she's gonna fly to Florida, beat my ass and then buy me a bed herself." She told me that she hates how independent I am but in truth, that's just how she raised me. She raised me to not have to rely on anybody for anything. Granted, I spent a good bit of my adulthood relying on my husband to take care of me, but that's over now. I know how to make a life for myself.

I throw the scrubbing brush I've been using to scrub my floors all morning into the bucket of hot, soapy water and take off the yellow gloves I've been wearing. I stand up from my floor and hear the bones in my hips crack. I grit my teeth to bear with the obvious pain but it's not so bad. I go over to my counter and grab the bottle of iced tea I've been drinking all morning. I chug some of the tea down and wipe my lips with the back of my hand. I run my fingers through my hair, mindful that it stops just after it touches my shoulders instead of all the way down past my boobs like it used to. There's a very tiny part of me that misses my long hair but the bigger part of me loves my new hair. It symbolizes the new me, I think. Old Jo had the long hair, not the new Jo. I pick up the bucket and slosh it around all the way outside onto the porch. I dump the dirty water out onto my lawn and take the bucket back inside. I have to get dressed for work now but when I get home, I'm going to start working on cleaning up my kitchen real good. I have to wash all the new cookware I got today and scrub my fridge and my stove real good. I didn't go grocery shopping today because I didn't have enough time to clean the fridge out and I didn't want to put good food into a dirty fridge so I waited. I turn my radio off and walk back to my bedroom. Lucille told me to wear a pair of jeans and a white tank top today, so that's what I grab out of my duffle. I take off the t-shirt I have on and pull down the pair of basketball shorts I'm wearing.

I pull the pair of jeans up to my hips, button them and zip them. I put the tank top on and go into the bathroom. I pick up my brush and comb it through my hair. I put the brush down, freshen up my eyeliner and look at myself in the mirror. I admit that I'm a little bit nervous to start my job. I've never waitressed before in my life. The only thing I know how to do is teach. But how hard can it be? I do it. It'll be a lot to learn but I can do it. Outside, I hear the blaring of a car's horn so I assume that it must be Lucille. I turn off my bathroom light, snag my phone off my bedroom floor, turn off my kitchen light and dash out the door, locking my house up behind myself. My hips are starting to ache but I hope they hold out long enough for me to knock this shift out. I wasn't thinking while I was at the store earlier. I should've bought pain reliever for my hips. I thought I had enough Aspirin in the bottle I packed in my duffle but I only have two more capsules and I decided to save those for bed tonight. As I walk up the pathway to get to Lucille's gray Ford Escape truck, I push the palm of my hand into the back of my hip because sometimes, applying pressure to my hips works. Sleeping on the floor last night really did me in good.

"Hey sweetie." Lucille reaches across her car from the driver's seat and opens up the passenger's side door for me. I step up into the truck and sit down. Once I sit, the pain my hips subsides just a little bit. I've only known Lucille for one full day but this car looks like her. Cigarette butts are piled up and spilling out of a very full ashtray, there's a bobblehead of Jesus on the dashboard and old school Sheryl Crow is playing over the radio. The vacuum cleaner that she's letting be borrow is in the backseat. "You ready to learn from the best?" She winks at me as she starts speeding away in the direction of the restaurant. "What happened to that pretty ponytail of yours?" She takes her eyes off the road for one second and touches my hair. "You had the prettiest hair I've ever seen..."

"My ponytail's in the garbage." I shrug my shoulders and fumble with my seat belt. "I needed a change so I cut it. Does it look bad?" I ask her but I tune out before I can hear her answer yes or no. When I got to my house last night, I was so invested in getting to know my own house that I didn't even go out and explore the neighborhood. But now, we're driving through the neighborhood I live in and I'm a little shocked at how beautiful it is. I totally live in the ugliest house in the neighborhood. Every house here looks like same in a way but they're all so nice. They look like true beach houses, wooden structures, gorgeous sliding glass doors, fancy flower gardens in the yard...it's a nice neighborhood. I stick my head out the window a little further and notice a woman walking a dog, a man painting a fence, a woman stuck in her garden...I live in a postcard neighborhood. Everyone here seems so relaxed. A man is carrying a tiny little girl with light brown hair, holding a McDonald's bag up steps and into a house...the dog that the lady is walking is barking...the place is too perfect. "So..." I bring my head back into the window and sit upright in my seat. "What time do you and I get off tonight? And is it ever busy on Tuesday nights?"

"Our shift is over at 9:00 tonight and it should go fast because tonight should be a busy night. It's Tilapia Tuesday...every Tuesday, our Tilapia fish dinners are $10.99 and everyone comes out to get one. It should be quite busy tonight." She pulls into the parking lot of The Lobster Hut and turns her car off. I get out of the car right along with her and grit my teeth. God, my hips hurt. "You okay over there, Jo?" She shuts her door and walks over to my side of the car. I put on a brave face because I'm scared if she sees that I'm in pain, she might tell someone and send me home. "Look, I don't know much, but...I know you're too young to walk like you're 80. You doing alright?"

"I'm fine." I wave my hand at her and shake my head. "I'm ready to start." I take my hand off my hips and smile. She's giving me that look. That "you poor thing" look that the woman back at the store in Chamberlain gave me. "I was..." I shake my head just so she knows that this REALLY isn't a big deal and she shouldn't make a big deal about it. "I was in a car accident a little while ago and I...um...shattered my pelvis. And I was hardheaded about my treatment and I never finished my um...my physical therapy. So sometimes my hips hurt but it's fine. I'm fine. I'm ready to work." I smooth my hair down to make myself presentable.

"Alright sweetie, if you say so." She motions for me to follow her and so I do. I walk closely behind her . "If you need to sit down at any time, just let me know." She pats me on my back then holds the door open for me. I walk right through and look around. It's already crowded in here, holy cow. Couldn't I have picked a slower day to train on? "Right back here, Jo." She holds open the gate that closes off the back of the bar. "I'm gonna teach you how to clock in first." I nod and follow her through this small wooden door. Behind the door is a small room with green carpet, a soda machine, a table, a bathroom door and a sink. It must be the room where we get to take our breaks. "This is the break room." She explains, just as I finish that thought. "This is where you'll come to clock in for your shift." She walks over to a table. "And Tony set our your badge and your shirt, which is good." She hands me a black t-shirt with a red lobster on the left breast pocket. "Put this on." I nod and pop the shirt over my head. "And here's your name tag." The name tag is shaped like a lobster and it has "Josephine" printed on a sticker across it. I pick up the tag and peel off the "sephine" part of the sticker. I pin the tag on my shirt in the same position as Lucille's. "This is the time clock." She shows me a machine hanging on a wall. "When it's time for your shift, you put your fingerprint right here..." She rests it on a touch screen. "And you're clocked in. It'll only let you clock in five minutes before your shift or five minutes after. No earlier, no later." She steps aside. "You try it out now."

"Okay." I nod my head and put my fingerprint on the sensor screen. It buzzes and flashes my name across the screen. "...Now what?" She hands me a black apron that ties around my waist and has pockets. I follow her lead and tie it around my back. "Lucille? What does...training consist of? For today, at least..."

"I'm just gonna teach you the floors. The best way for you to learn is to watch so I want you to shadow me for today. I'm gonna teach you the menu, I'm gonna teach you the tables...Tony numbered the tables for you to make it easier. I'll show you how to write things down on your notepad and how to take the orders back to the kitchen. Follow me out." She leaves out of the break room and I follow. "Tomorrow I'll brush you up on the bartending tomorrow...bartending is way easier than waiting tables but I think I should give you the hard part today." She reaches in a case and hands me a notepad. "This is your notepad...decorate it if you want, don't decorate it...it's yours to keep. We're gonna start with the menu." I put the notepad in my front pocket. She puts a menu in front of me.

"Ooooh...fresh meat." A very tall guy with crop-cut, short black hair and hoop earrings in his ears walks behind me and slaps me on the butt. I jump and gasp. "I'm Luke, honey...anything you need, just call me." He holds his hand out to me and chomps on some gum. I'd be more offended by the butt-slap if it wasn't blatantly obvious that he's gay. "What's your name? Your name is..." He squints and looks at my name tag. "Your name is Jo? Ooh, girl that's cute...and I like them shoes. Where'd you get them?"

I giggle and bite my lip. "Hi...it's nice to meet you. It's Josephine really, but...you can call me Jo." I look down at my shoes. It's just a pair of plain black Vans. "I got these at Journeys." I can't wipe the smile off my face. I love him already. He's already so much fun. "I like your earrings."

"Aw, thank you girl." He "tucks" his hair behind his ear and leans against the bar counter, sticking his butt out when he does. "Hey Lucy girl, I gotta tell you something. So I was waiting on that fucker that always comes in here and orders the crab meat souffle, right? And he told Tony he didn't want the gay one waiting on him. You know what I did?" He's talking to Lucille and Lucille is keeping a straight face and I can't imagine how. I guess she's just use to him by now but he's hilarious. I love him and I can't stop laughing and smiling. "I told that fucker 'Yes, I am gay and there's nothing nobody can do about it!' And I brought him his coffee and told him to have a nice day. Girl, I'm so glad I get outta here in three hours. I can't deal with these people." He shakes his head. "Ain't nothing wrong with having a little sugar in your tank. Everybody's a little gay. Jo girl, are you gay?"

"...No." I shake my head and try not to laugh. "I can't say that I am." I flip through the menu. "...Do all of the entrees come with two sides or just the ones as marked?" I look up.

"All come with two sides but they can add a side for three more dollars. They can't take a side away though, don't let them try to talk you into that." Luke answers my question and puts his hand on my shoulder. "You're gonna be my best friend, Jojobear. Just watch." Jojobear? What the hell? That's new...my mom couldn't even come up with something that cheesy. Oh god, I love him so much. He's hilarious.

"I'm looking forward to that, Lukey." I pat his shoulder.

 **X X X**

"You weren't kidding when you said people really come out for that fish special." I have a finally have a free minute so I lean against the bar counter and take some weight off my feet. I don't know which hurts worse between my feet and my hips. They both hurt pretty bad. "I've never seen so many people in one small place." I told everyone that I was a fast learner and they didn't believe me until about an hour ago when I recited the entire menu back to Lucille and Tony. I thought then would be a good time to tell them that I graduated from two Ivy League schools but I didn't want to seem braggy so I just kept it to myself. Lucille is busy running around behind the counter trying to serve drinks. Tony doesn't think I'm ready to be on the floor by myself just yet so I just started observing Lucille as a bartender. I'm learning how to bartend in addition to waitressing. I've been here for four hours already and I feel like I just got here. The day has been going pretty fast because Lucille was right, it's busy as hell. I only have two more hours of my shift. I think I'm going to like my new job. I like the people I work with the most, especially Luke. He's a hell of a lot of fun. "Do you need help with anything, Lus?" She's been nice enough to split her tips with me so I can be nice enough to make a couple drinks for her if she needs it. Technically, I'm just a trainee and the tips she's getting from the tables that I've been helping her with are supposed to be her tips and her tips only but she's been splitting them with me. I have twenty bucks in my pocket right now.

"No sweetie, I'm alright." She's busy mixing up a Bloody Mary. "Go see if Luke needs help in section ten."

"Alright." I nod and walk towards the gate to get from back behind the bar. Just as I'm about to open the gate though, Luke comes storming through it.

"I should've been outta here a long time ago." He slams the gate shut and leans against the bar. "I'm about to punch an old lady in her mouth. It's not my fault your mashed potatoes are cold, do I look like a cook to you? To I look like a slave?" He slams down a plate of mashed potatoes and I can't stop laughing. I've been laughing all day. "Next time Tony asks me to stay over, I'm saying no. I don't care how bad the dinner rush is and I don't care if I'm walking outta here tonight with $400 in tip money. I don't get paid enough to be cussed out by old people that smell like oatmeal and lotion. I can't do this no more. I had to tell Kaylee to take my section cause I need a moment."

"I'm sorry, Lukey." I rub his shoulder. "But that's just it. Think about the tip money. She might only leave you three bucks but that's three bucks you can have in your pocket, right?"

"I'll shove that three bucks down that bitch's throat." He rolls his eyes and just as he gets done being mean, he gasps and jumps up and down. "Oh my sweet baby Jesus! Look who's coming through the door!" I turn my head and look at who he's pointing at. There's a man coming into the restaurant with a little girl on his hip. I think I saw the two of them this morning, but I'm not sure. "Ooooh...that man is SO fine." I look at him. He's okay...not fine, but okay. I don't know. He's no Mark Warren, that's for sure. He has big, muscular arms and shaggy brown hair. His daughter, I assume, has light brown hair and greenish eyes. She's a cutie. "Look at those arms...oh, goodness. I'd like to knock down his barnyard doors, if you know what I'm saying..."

"You're way too much." I shake my head at Luke just as Kaylee, the other waitress on the floor brings back an empty pitcher of what used to be Coca Cola. She puts the empty pitcher on the counter so I take it to refill it. I know I'm just a trainee but I don't feel right just standing around while everyone busts their ass to work around here. I take the pitcher over to the soda fountain.

"Kaylee, look at him..." Luke points the man and his daughter out to Kaylee. "Fine ass man..."

"He is so fine." Kaylee agrees with him, squints at the man and shakes her head. "I would have his baby. No shame, no care. He's so damn sexy. Look at those muscles...and that hair...oh my god." She licks her lips. Does everybody in this restaurant know this man? I bring the full pitcher over to the counter and join both Luke and Kaylee in their gawking at the man and his kid. I'm more interested in his daughter than him. His daughter is beautiful. She's gorgeous. I've never seen a toddler that looks like that. She's one of those kids that is strikingly gorgeous. She'll make you stop in your tracks just to tell him how beautiful she is. She could be a model or something. "And he makes money...dear god, he's so perfect."

"Hot damn." Lucille comes over and joints the three of us at the counter. "That's a whole lotta man right there." She thinks he's hot too?

"...What's his story? Why does everybody know him? What's so special about him?" I remain staring at the guy just so I can follow everyone else's lead but it becomes awkward once everyone stops looking at him and starts looking at me. "...What?! I'm new here...I don't know anybody. Why does everyone know him? What's wrong with him? Does everybody just think he's sexy or is there something else?"

"Wife died of some kind of cancer a few months back." Lucille leans over to whisper to me. "Been raising that little girl by himself since then. He's totally gorgeous and totally single. And Jo, he's paid. He works at a hospital up in Pensacola. He's a Pediatrician and I heard that he's SUPER nice. I heard that he's the biggest sweetheart you'd ever want to meet.. but doesn't date. He's been known to turn down dates and he lives alone with his daughter. There's no way a man like that can stay single though. He's the most eligible bachelor in Millerton and he refuses to date. I think he needs a woman...look at him. He's godly."

"...His daughter's really pretty." I lean against the counter and try to see the sexiness everyone else sees in him. I think maybe I'm just too hung up on Mark because I don't think he's all that special. He's good looking for sure but I don't get the hype. His daughter, on the other hand, is drop dead gorgeous. "Anyone know her name?"

" _His_ name is Alex." Kaylee nudges my shoulder. "Alex Karev...can you just imagine screaming that out during climax? Even his _name_ is sexy."

"...He's alright." I shrug my shoulders.


	9. Building

**A/N:** If you follow me on tumblr, you might have seen that I planned on taking a break from writing. I was going to go the rest of this week and some of next week without writing anything but I decided that it wouldn't be fair to those of you that have been patient, lenient and nice to me when it comes to some mistakes I've made with this story. It's because of you guys that I decided I won't take as long a break as I originally wanted to. I'm just sick of reading negative things when it comes to this story. At first it made me sad, now it's starting to get on my nerves. But I'm pushing through it and I'm not going to take a break like I wanted to. I hope you guys like this story from here on out. I'll be more cautious with what I decide to put in it.

Also, there's some sensitive content in this chapter, I guess. I don't really know what you guys consider sensitive anymore so here's just a fair warning about the drama that surrounds Alex in this chapter.

* * *

The sound of the wood creaking as I rock back and forth on the swing hanging from my ceiling is just a little obnoxious and annoying but by the looks of it, Lyla seems to find it soothing. She was up all night coughing and crying about her aching ear and she didn't fall asleep until somewhere around 1:00 in the morning, which means I didn't get to sleep until around 1:30. I like to make sure she's deeply asleep before I go to bed myself and I was sure she was deep enough asleep at 1:30. I had every intention on going into work at 8:30 this morning like I was scheduled but with Lyla's infection taking a turn for the worst, I called off at 6:00 this morning. She's running a pretty nasty fever and her ear was draining pus and liquid this morning. I gave her a double dose of antibiotic and some Tylenol to take the pain away and she's been under the weather all day. She doesn't even want to play in her room or outside in the backyard. All she wants to do is lie down and be held. I'm starting to regret taking her out to eat last night. The doctor part of me knows that me taking her out to eat has nothing to do with the fact that her ear got worse. The doctor part of me knows that her ear would've been nasty regardless if I had her in the house or out and about yesterday. But the father part of me can't help but worry that maybe if I had kept her in the house and fed her something like soup and grilled cheese instead of crab legs, her ear wouldn't be this bad. It's like I take five steps forward with this single dad thing, and then ten steps back. Every time I feel like I'm doing something right, I turn around and do something wrong.

Careful not to disturb her, I swiftly turn the page of the newspaper I'm reading and continue the cover page story. She's sitting on the swing next to me but her head is resting on my stomach and she's holding my iPad in front of her face. I found a couple episodes of The Bubble Guppies on YouTube and she's been quietly sitting here and watching them for the last hour. Her favorite TV show is something called Sofia The First but I couldn't find any good quality episodes of that on YouTube so she settled for The Bubble Guppies. I know I took the day off of work just to make sure she's feeling better but I think taking a day off to spend time with her is something I'm going to start doing in the future. I'll make it a point to take at least one day off a month to sit at home and relax with her because she seems to like it. On my regular off days, those will be the days we go to the beach or to the grocery store or swimming at the YMCA. I'll take one additional day off of work for relaxation day at home. This morning, the both of us woke up around 10:00 and I fixed her scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast. We ate and then we went into the living room and I watched some movie about this Disney princess freezing everything with her—the same movie the snowman on her Band-Aid came from. After the movie, I took her upstairs and gave her a hot bath and popped some popcorn and we watched another movie, this one was about a dolphin without a tail and how these scientists built him a tail and he lived happily ever after with his prosthetic tail. I wouldn't readily admit this to anyone, but I liked that movie. It was kind of cute.

After the second movie, I heated up her crab legs from last night's dinner and fed her that for lunch. I offered to take her out in the backyard so she could play in the jungle gym we have out there but she said no. She said she just wanted me to pick her up and so I did. I washed dishes with her on my hip, threw a load of my laundry in the washer and now we're out here. This is my usual 1:30 regime. Lyla's usually taking a nap around this time so I'm sitting outside reading the newspaper on the porch. Well, she's not asleep so I just brought her outside with me and I turned on The Bubble Guppies and she's perfectly content. Every now and again, I'll look down at her to see if she's still awake and when I find that she is, I'll rub her hair to let her know that I haven't forgotten about her and then we'll leave each other alone again. I turn the page of the newspaper to start reading the story about the fireman's club downtown hosting something for the Fourth of July this year. Just as I settle in to begin reading the story, Lyla nudges my stomach with her elbow to get my attention. I close the paper and look down at her. She hands me the iPad, silently telling me that this episode is over and she wants a new one. I turn another episode on and hand it back to her. I pull the pink and purple blanket I draped over her legs up to ensure that she's covered and continue reading my paper.

Apparently, the fireman's club is sponsoring a Fourth of July party down at the boardwalk on the beach this year. They're going to have food, games, prizes, a parade and a firework show later on in the night. I think I'll go ahead and take Lyla to that. She might like it. I'll have to double check my schedule for next month but I'm pretty sure Arizona gave me the fourth off. I haven't had a Fourth of July off since I've started working there because the Fourth is always one of the busiest days at the hospital, with firework accidents and all. I think she gave it to me off this year because my situation has sorta changed this year with Jenna being gone and all. See, there are some perks to being good friends with the head of Pediatric surgery...like her giving me certain days off without having to request them, for example. I tear the ad out of the paper for the Fourth of July party and sit it down on the swing next to me. I'll hang it on the fridge because if I don't, I'll forget all about it. Lyla giggles at the episode she's watching and when she giggles, she starts coughing. I can't take off work tomorrow too so she's going to have to sit with my mom tomorrow. I feel guilty about it but I already took off one day and I can't take off another. My dad has a doctor's appointment to see about his cataracts tomorrow so he can't watch her like he usually does. I already asked my mom if she would and she said she'd love to watch her so that's where Lyla's going tomorrow. I hate leaving her with my mother because my mom tends to overdo her role as babysitter when she has her but I have no other choice. I could stick Lyla in the daycare they offer at the hospital where I work but being that she has crippling shyness, I don't think that's a good idea. I prefer to leave her with people she already knows.

As I flip to the "classifieds" section of the newspaper, I hear what sounds like tapping, making it's way down my sidewalk. I close the paper again for a second and look down at Lyla to make sure she's not making that tapping noise. It's not her. She's still watching the video on my iPad and sucking away on her pacifier. I look out into my front yard and the tapping sound is getting closer and closer until eventually, I see that it's someone's feet that's making the noise. A girl, carrying two handfuls of blue grocery bags is walking slowly by my house with her head down. The backs of her flip-flop sandals are making the "clip-clop" tapping noise when they smack against her heels as she takes each step. It's somewhere around 80-90 degrees outside today and she's wearing a pair of dark gray sweatpants and a yellow spaghetti-strapped tank top, along with her sandals. She has shoulder-length brunette hair and a very slim waistline. Wait, she must be the new girl everyone's been talking about. Short brown hair, really petite and a childish face? That's definitely her. I watch her as she walks in front of my gate. She doesn't look like she'd be in to partying and drinking and drugs. She looks like she's walking back from the bus stop at the end of the block and coming back from grocery shopping. She looks like she'll mind her own business.

She's walking kind of funny though. She's almost limping but I think it's because she's carrying a bunch of groceries in her hands and she's walking. If it was a normal day, where Lyla was taking her nap and I was alone out here on the porch, I would offer to help her out with her groceries, only because she seems to be struggling. At least her house is only about another block away. She pauses for a moment, adjusts her bags in her hands and continues on her way. I wonder if Mrs. Jensen has said anything to her yet. I'd like to think that she didn't. I'd like to think that she got a good look at the girl and decided that she's not an issue because really, she doesn't seem like she would be. She's walking around carrying her bags of groceries that she took a bus to buy. If she was some kind of hardcore partier, I don't even think she would be interested in taking a bus to go get groceries. Truth be told, I'm kind of wondering about her now. She moved into the crappiest house on the block; no scratch that—she moved into the crappiest house in town. She doesn't look like she's into making a meth lab so she must be next to desperate.

"Dada?" Lyla interrupts my thinking about the new girl with a tap on my arm. "Dada." She hands me the iPad so I take it off of her to put on a new episode but when I take it, I realize that the episode is still playing and it doesn't need to be changed. So I put the iPad down next to me and look down at her. "I pee peed." She sits up and hands me her pacifier. "I pee peed daddy." I nod my head and stand up. I look back out onto the sidewalk but the new girl is officially gone. I sigh. I pick Lyla up and put her on my hip so I can change her. There's one thing and one thing only that I agree with my mother on and that is that Lyla is ready to be toilet trained. If she's old enough and smart enough to tell me when she pees and poops on herself, she's old enough and smart enough to go sit on the potty when she has to go. I'm gonna start potty training her...I swear I am. I don't know how and I don't know when but I really am going to potty train her. I pick up the iPad and the newspaper and the blanket and bring them all in the house. After I change her, I'll turn on the TV in the living room and let her watch it while I fix dinner. I think I'm going to make chicken parmesean sandwiches. She likes pasta and I don't feel like making her a batch of lasagna so chicken parm seems like a good option. "Dada, you pee pee too?"

"Yeah, I pee." I shut the front door behind the both of us and take her to the living room. It's a sad shame how I keep pull-ups in nearly every room of the house. Maybe I'll run to the store sometime this week and get underwear for her. I think that's probably the best way to introduce her to the idea. If I buy her big girl underwear and show her all the pretty colors, I can introduce her to the potty like that and tell her that she can wear them if she learns how to use the potty. I have to make it fun for her in some kind of way. "Daddy pees in the potty though. Daddy's a big boy so he pees in the potty." I lie her down on the couch and take off her pajama pants. "Lyla's gonna learn to pee pee in the potty too." I take her pull-up off and stick her legs through a fresh one. When the new one is on her, she stands up on the couch and starts jumping on it. It's good to know that she feels better but I don't want her jumping on the couch. "No jumping on the couch, Ly. Sit down." I roll up the dirty diaper and put her pajama pants on the back of the couch. We're in the house now and rather than fight her to put them back on her, I'd rather just let her go pants-less.

"I jumping daddy!" She continues jumping up and down on the couch. "I jumping!"

"Sit down. Sit down and when I come back in here, I'll put something on TV for you to watch." She pokes her lip out and sits down on the couch instead of jumping on it. "I'll be right back, sweetness." I take the diaper to the kitchen and stick it in a plastic shopping bag so the smell doesn't make the entire kitchen stink. I tie the bag shut and stick it in the trashcan. I go to the freezer so I can defrost the package of chicken breasts I'll use for dinner tonight. I take the package out and stick it in the sink.

"Daaaaaaaddy!" Just as I start to run hot water over the chicken breasts, I hear a loud thud from the living room, followed by Lyla screaming—literally, screaming—my name. I rush to the living room to see what's the matter. As soon as I get into the living room, I see Lyla lying on the ground next to the coffee table. She's holding the left side of her face and she's at the point where she's silent because she's trying to catch her breath so she can scream. She doesn't have tears coming out of her eyes just yet but I know they're coming because her entire face is bloodshot red. I run over to her and scoop her up and as soon as her head hits my shoulder, she starts crying hard and loud. I don't need to ask her what happened because I already know. I already know she started jumping on the couch again after I clearly told her not to. It's hard to be mad at her though, especially when she's crying as hard as she is.

"Lemme see, Ly. Let me see..." I put her down on the couch and kneel in front of her. Her hand is clamped over the side of her face and she's hysterical. "Let daddy see." I pee her hands away from her face. Her mouth is bleeding and the side of her face, right next to her eye is already swelling up. "...Didn't I tell you to sit down?" I wipe the blood from her mouth with the back of my hand so I can see where it's coming from. I think she just bit her lip really hard. There are no teeth missing or anything like that. "Are you gonna listen to me next time?" I pick her up again and her head goes right back on my shoulder. I rub her back. "You're alright...you're okay." I take her to the kitchen and put her down on the counter. She's going to have a black eye tomorrow, I can see it now. I wet a paper towel in the sink and wring the water out. I dab it on her lip to clean off the blood. "Did you hit your head?" She nods and holds her arms out for me to hold her again. "Let me clean you up first." I hold the paper towel against her lip and examine her eye. She just hit it, probably off the side of the coffee table or something. It's not bleeding, she's not blinded and she's going to have a pretty nasty shiner tomorrow morning. "Daddy will hold some ice on it. You'll be okay." She pokes her lip out again so I kiss it. "All better?" She shakes her head so I kiss her eye too. "How about now?" She nods. "Wanna watch TV?" She nods again.

I kiss her on her cheek again and pick her back up. I take her back to the living room and put her on the couch. She's still holding the side of her face and she looks so upset. I turn on the TV and find Sofia the First for her to watch. "...Bad table, huh?" I put the remote on the couch next to her so she can change the channel if she wants. "Mean table." She's starting to crack a smile but she won't let it fully cross her face. I bend down and slap the glass of the coffee table. "Mean table!" She smiles at me. "Say, it...say 'bad table!' Say it."

"...Bad table." She points at it and sticks her tongue out at it.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I unfold my shirts from the folded piles I had them in while they were inside my duffle. I bought hangers at the dollar store today so I can officially put my clothes in the closet. I think my favorite part of this town is the dollar store. I know that probably sounds stupid but I'm being 100% truthful here. Lucille brought me home from work again today and on the way home, she had to stop at the dollar store so I went with her. They have everything in the dollar store here. They even have cheap furniture in this dollar store. Granted, the furniture comes in a box, I have to build it myself and it's most likely breakable under very little force but I bought two end tables for my bedroom from the dollar store. I'm not going to put them together until I have a bed though. The money my mom sent me should be here by tomorrow. I also took a bus to the grocery store and stocked up on some food. I had to make myself familiar with the grocery store around here so I'm not wandering around every time I go in it and I found that they have air mattresses in the superstore as well as groceries. I saw an air mattress that costs $230 and I think I'm going to buy myself the air mattress until I can save up enough of my tip money to buy myself a nice bedroom set.

Work today was pretty fun, to say the least. I only worked from 8:00 to 12:30 because it was so slow that Lucille got sent home and since she's my trainer, I have to do whatever she does. I left work last night with $43 in my pocket, from the tips that Lucille split with me. I only had $12 when I left this morning. I learned pretty much everything I need to know at work in two days. I learned the menu, the tables, the drinks and the daily specials. I still have to look at the menu to find out which meals can be used as side dishes or entrees and I have to check to make sure I don't screw up the soup of the day, but I'm pretty proficient at everything. Today was just a day to brush up on the bartending aspect of everything and since it was slow, Luke and this girl named Macy acted as my customers while I took their orders. I worked with Lucille, Luke and this little blonde girl named Macy, who's also very nice. Anyway, I have my first real shift on my own tomorrow and I'm a little bit nervous to screw up. I don't work with Lucille tomorrow because she's going on vacation for a few days, but I do work with Luke and this girl named Patty. I work the evening shift so I should bring in good tips from the dinner rush.

I carry my hangers over to my closet and put them up on the bar. I'm fully unpacked now. The only thing I had left to take out of my duffle was my clothes. I shut my closet and walk toward my kitchen. Ever since I scrubbed and vacuumed my carpets, they've been so much softer. I stop at my front door in my kitchen and stomp on my tennis shoes. The inside of my house is finally complete. I cleaned every room from ceiling to baseboard, I cleaned my fridge and put my groceries away, I put my bathroom in order and there's not much to my bedroom but I fixed the blankets of my makeshift bed. I'm going to start on the outside now. I drag out a bucket, a sponge, the carpet scrubber, a roll of paper towels and window cleaner and put everything on my dirty porch. I hold onto the railing next to my steps and carefully walk down them. I think I saw a hose on the side of my house but I'm not real sure so I'm gonna go check. I walk around to the side of my house and check. Sure enough, there's a green garden hose hanging up on the side of my house but it looks really old so I doubt that it actually works. I unravel it and hold onto the squirting part of it. I twist the faucet on and surprisingly, the water flows through the hose and comes out of the squirter. Okay, good. I wanted to hose off the outside of my house but I wasn't sure if I was going to have to buy a hose or not.

I keep the squirter pointed at the ground and walk the hose up on my porch. First, I fill up the bucket I brought out on the porch with water from the hose. Once it's all filled up, I start hosing off my door and my windows. Lucille told me that I shouldn't worry about what the outside of my house looks like because I'm not living on the outside and I guess she's right but I still don't want to live in a house that looks scary from the outside. Eventually, I hope I get enough money that I can paint my house. I won't paint the entire exterior of it. I'll just repaint the door, the shutters and the porch. It's crazy how much cleaner the house is already starting to look, just from me hosing it off. I turn around so I can hose off the front pillars on my porch and when I turn, I see someone walking toward me. I pause for a second, shocked that it seems like someone is going to come visit me. I don't know anyone...why would anyone want to come visit me? An elderly woman with light gray hair and thick rimmed glasses is walking up the pathway. Well, I'd better not be rude.

I put the hose down and let the water spray out onto my front lawn. I walk back down the steps so she doesn't have to come all the way up my walkway. I meet her next to the tree in my yard. I really wish I still had on the pair of sweatpants I wore out to the store today because I don't need her to see my legs as a first impression but I ditched the sweatpants as soon as I got back in the house because I was burning up. I shake my hands dry and wipe them on the seat of my baggy shorts as I approach the woman with a very fake smile on my face. "Hello." I use my nice voice to greet her. She doesn't appear to have driven here so I assume she's a neighbor of mine. Unless she walked all the way over here from the other side of town...no, that's unlikely. "Can I help you with something?" I ask her, hooking my thumbs through the belt hoops of my shorts.

"Sandy Jensen...nice to meet you." She holds her hand out to me.

I take her hand in mine and politely shake it. "Josephine Wilson, ma'am." We stop shaking hands and I return my thumb to the belt loop I took it out of. "You can call me Jo...and you must be one of my neighbors?" I smile at her.

"Yes, I live in the brown house down the street...right there." She points it out to me and I look, even though I can't see it. I pretend to see it though. "I just thought that I'd come introduce myself and formally welcome you to Pembroke." Her intentions seem friendly but I'm really good at reading people's energies and I can tell that she's expecting to be firm with me...lay down the law, maybe? I was raised to respect my elders by my mother but I sure hope this woman doesn't start talking crazy to me because I'll have to tell her to get the hell out of my yard. "Are you new to the area or just passing through for the moment?"

"I'm new...I'm from Massachusetts. I'm new to Florida, actually...not just Millerton." I try to keep my tone happy, cheerful and respectful. "This is a beautiful neighborhood." I take a deep breath and pretend to look around, taking in the scenery.

"Yes, yes it is." She nods her head at me and clears her throat. "Well, I'm not sure you know, but this is a relatively old neighborhood...our youngest resident here is 30 years old and the rest of us are well above retirement age. You see, we're used to living in a quiet, serene neighborhood...we just don't want anything disrupting that." I respectfully nod my head at her. Is she implying that I would disturb that? Is she trying to make sure I'm not a disturbance? Because if she is, that's horribly unfair. I'm not bothering anybody. I'm cleaning my freaking house for crying out loud. Cut me some slack here. I just left one place where everyone terribly misjudged me and I don't need any of that here. "How old are you? If you don't mind my asking."

Internally, I'm dying to tell her to mind her own damn business but like I said, I was raised so much better than that. "29." I clear my throat. She's clearly surprised that I'm as old as I just said that I am. I get that a lot though. Most people think I'm 23 or 25. I want to tell her to piss off, leave me alone and keep her crazy assumptions to herself but I really don't want to disrespect this woman. I just need to find a tactful way to let her know that I'm not going to be a bother in her oh-so-perfect neighborhood. "Um...yeah, I just moved here from Massachusetts." I tuck my hair behind my ear and cross my arms over my chest. "I wanted a new environment so I moved down here. I actually waitress down at them um...The Lobster Hut for now but that's only until a teaching position opens up at school around here. I'm actually a teacher."

"Oh, really?" She raises her eyebrows and cracks a smile across her hardened face. I think I might have softened her up by telling her that I'm a teacher. I think it's now clear to her that I'm not going to be a freaking disturbance. "Do you have family here? Maybe I know your folks..."

"No, it's just me." I shake my head. "No family, no friends...just me." I try to smile again. I can tell that she's wondering about me now. I can tell she's wondering why the hell I would just pick up and move to Florida without my friends or my family. My mind is working, trying to figure out a lie to tell her...a lie to make my move here seem more plausible to her. Something that doesn't require me telling her that I killed my husband and someone else that I don't feel like addressing right now. A lie that covers everything but is also believable. Like maybe I moved here to help my sick grandmother out but then she'd ask about the sick grandma because old people are nosy like that. I need a lie to tell her, a lie to tell her quick. But for the first time in my entire lying career...

I don't know what to say.

 **X X X**

"Sometimes I run...sometimes I hide. Sometimes I'm scared of you. But all I really want is to hold you tight...treat you right. Be with you day and night...baby all I need is time." I've been singing an awful lot since I've moved into this house and I'm not quite sure why. I mean, it's probably because I don't have a TV or any other means of entertainment but I've never really been much of a singer. I always have liked music, even as a little girl but even though I would sit in my bedroom and blast music while I did my homework, I would never sing. I was just never...really a singer, honestly. But as I've been cleaning up my house, setting things up...I can't stop singing. I'm currently sitting in a boiling hot bubble bath belting out the lyrics to a Britney Spears song and I feel pathetic. I really should invest in getting a television sometime soon though because this singing thing isn't me.

I take a deep breath and dunk my washcloth underneath the hot, soapy water. It's taking me a while to get used to the hot water because I made it scalding hot but it has to be pretty hot if I want it to help my hips. One thing I look away from my physical therapy treatments is letting my body soak in hot water for half an hour at least once a week. I try to do that because when I get out, I do actually feel better. Maybe once I get established and financially stable, I can get good health insurance and maybe continue with my physical therapy. I guess I'm just glad that I can walk. I shattered my pelvis in the accident and they told me that I probably wouldn't walk ever again and here I am, walking. I can run too but I don't run...I just don't run. I remember overhearing Mark's parents telling their lawyers that they couldn't believe that I got out of the accident "unscathed." I think that was the first time I really broke down over something that Mark's parents have said to/about me. I mean...define "unscathed"? I don't think being pinned underneath an overturned car for two hours is unscathed. I don't think shattering my pelvis into so many pieces that I have more metal than bones in my hips is unscathed. I think they just would've been happier if I died too. I think they're just mad at I survived and Mark and the other person didn't. I wish Mark had survived too but I think the fact that the other person—the person that I REALLY don't want to talk about—died too because of my actions eats at me more than the fact that Mark died does.

I tilt my head back and wring my washcloth out on my face, just to get my face wet. You know what? I'm away from Chamberlain now. I'm in the privacy of my own home, nobody's looking at me, nobody's judging me and nobody hates me here yet. My jaw trembles and I can feel my eyebrows contort and instead of forcing it away, pushing it back like I've been doing, just to put on a brave face and show the people of Chamberlain that I'm strong, I just let it go. I'm tired of holding it back. I'm so tired of just bottling it all in, pushing it out of my thoughts and giving up my right to grieve. I watched my husband—the love of my life—die. Right in the car, right beside me, I watched him die. We smashed into the guardrail and the car was rolling and one minute, he was there...he was telling me that he loved me, that he loved me so, so much and that he couldn't wait for us to spend he rest of our lives together and everything and then the next minute, he was gone. He stopped talking and that was it. Crashing into the guardrail like that sobered me up within seconds. The last thing I heard him say was my name. We were hanging upside down, dangling by our seat belts and I looked over to the passenger's side and he was trying to hold my hand but he couldn't move. And he said my name and that was it. It took them two hours to get me out. For two hours, I sat there next to my dead husband's body. I was completely conscious when they cut me out of that car and the whole time, I was just praying that either I'd lose consciousness or I'd die too. I couldn't feel my legs and I was screaming for someone to come help me—come help us, save my husband. I just wanted to die too. Damn, I miss my husband. I miss how happy he made me.

I sniff and wipe my face off with my soaking wet washcloth. I clear my throat and exhale hard. Okay, I'm alright now. I needed to cry. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, but I needed that. I thought that when I let the emotions following Mark's death finally hit me like I just let them, I would be inconsolable and just...a wreck. But I wasn't. I'm fine now and crying felt good. I imagine that when I'm ready to think about the other person I killed, I will be an emotional wreck. I'm just not ready to confront that part yet. I clear my throat once again and grab the bar of soap that's resting on the ledge just above my shoulder. I lather my washcloth up with the soap and start washing my arms and chest up first. I'd love to just sit here and soak in the bathtub for a while longer but I can't. I have two pieces of french bread pizza in the oven for dinner and I have to go get them before they burn. I grip the side of the tub and pull myself up. My hips feel so good right now. They don't hurt at all.

Anyway, even after talking to that nosy old woman today, I still feel like Millerton is going to be head and shoulders above Chamberlain. I'm determined to put everything that happened in Massachusetts behind me and I'll be damned if I let it control my life again. I just want to work here, fix up my house, find a teaching job and live happily ever after with my new friends in my new town, in my new state. I'm not looking to find a man, I'm not looking to have children and have a family. I'm so content with the way things are right now that I'm honestly scared that something is going to change. Don't get me wrong. I'm not content with the fact that I live in this house, I'm not content with making three dollars an hour and I'm not content with the fact that I'm a widow. But I am content with the fact that nobody here knows me, nobody here judges me, and nobody here is mean to me. I'm content with my life...pleasantly satisfied.

I wrap a towel around my body and tuck it under my armpit so it'll stay up. I step out of the bathtub and walk to my kitchen. Come to think of it, my house is kind of cozy...in a scary kind of way. It's just me in here and since I fixed it up, it's sort of homely. Just wait until I get a bed and a couch and a TV and a kitchen table. Then, I'll really have a decent place. I open up my oven and check on my pizzas. They need to cook a little while longer, so I walk back to my bedroom and find a pair of pajamas. I seem to live in a really nice neighborhood. I found out a lot from talking to that old woman today, after I decided against lying to her. I didn't lie to her, I just decided that it's none of her business if I'm here without my family or not. But I found out that all my neighbors are old people, aside from a the guy named Alex. The "cute" one from work yesterday? He lives on my street too. Mrs. Jensen says that he's a busy man and he's not home very much. Apparently, his pretty little girl is three years old and her name is Layla, I think she said. She told me the same thing Lucille told me at work yesterday, that he's a nice guy but he's sort of a loner that's all about his daughter since his wife died of Lymphoma a little while ago.

I sort of feel bad for him in a certain kind of way. Everyone probably views him as a loner or rude because he turns down dates but I just don't think they understand how much it sucks to lose someone you love. If his wife died as short a time ago as everyone says she did, I don't know how they expect him to just be okay and jump into the dating scene right away. Poor guy. I will say one thing about Millerton vs. Chamberlain... back in Chamberlain, we didn't bash guys for pulling away from dating to focus on their children. Those were the kind of guys everyone sought after in Chamberlain. But I guess for a guy to be deemed, "the most eligible bachelor in Millerton" he must be doing something right. I gotta be honest though...I don't really get the hype about the guy. I saw him last night and for a second on his porch this morning and he looks like a regular guy to me. He's not ugly but I don't get why everyone is so intrigued by him. He seems like a good, decent guy...with a job, taking care of his kid. Guys like that are a dime a dozen in Chamberlain. Maybe they're not used to that here in Millerton.

I do feel bad for him though. But make that one person that I have something in common with here in Chamberlain. I'll probably never talk to the guy but it's nice to know that there's someone here that would understand what I'm going through if crap were to hit the fan with me here in Millerton. If people were to ever find out about my past here, maybe he'd understand that I lost someone I loved and maybe he'll be nice to me. I'll probably never speak more than a word to him, but he'd understand me, I think. That's comforting...

And scary at the same time.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Dada, when you comin' home?" We're not even at my mother's house yet and she's already asking me when she can be home with me. She's sitting in the backseat of the car sucking on her pacifier and holding her stuffed lion. I work 3:00 to 11:00 today so by the time I get home and make it to my mom's to come pick her up, she should be sleeping. Her ear is doing better today and she's not coughing as much as she was yesterday but she's still not 100%. Plus, her little face is still hurting her. I was right. She woke up with a nasty black eye and a swollen lip but she's still gorgeous. I'm gonna bring home some of the ice packs and eye patches from the hospital. Her black eye will go away faster if she sleeps with ice on it and the way for her to sleep with ice on it is to bring her home one of the fancy ice packs we use for child abuse victims and broken bones. The fancy ice packs ice the wound to the point where swelling goes down but it doesn't freeze the skin. "I don't wunna go to Gammys." She's been telling me that all day. She told me that when I poured her cereal, she told me that when I made her turkey sandwich for lunch, she told me that when I packed her bag and she told me that when I put her in the car. "You comin' home wight?"

"I'll be home when you wake up from your nap tomorrow. I know you don't want me to go but I have to. I took off work to play with you yesterday, I can't do it again even though I want to." I pull into my mom's driveway. "You gotta be good for Grammy though. If you're good for her, daddy will take you to get ice cream when he gets home tomorrow. Okay?" I work 3-11 tonight and then I have to turn around and go back to work from 7-3. My dad is coming over at 6:00 tomorrow morning to watch her while I work. I'll take her for ice cream when I get home from work tomorrow afternoon. I get out of the car and walk around to get her out of the backseat. She unstraps herself from her seat and climbs over to me. I pick her up and rest my cheek against the top of her head. After I drop her off here, this will be the last time I see her until tomorrow afternoon. I'm gonna miss her so much. "You gonna be good for Grammy?" She nods her head and clings to me. "Daddy's gonna miss you."

"Miss you too daddy." She twists my hair around her finger and rubs my stubble with her other hand. I stroke her hair and kiss the top of her head. I'm going to cry in a minute if I don't get outta here. I didn't know leaving her was gonna be this hard. I'm gonna come back and pick her up around 11:30 tonight but she'll be sleeping...and she'll still be sleeping by the time I go to work tomorrow morning. I'm not gonna see her until this time tomorrow. I don't want t leave her. "Daddy, hurry back... I miss you."

"I'll hurry." I rub her back and sigh. I should take her in now before I'm late for work. Arizona won't penalize me if I'm a few minutes late but I try to be punctual. I carry Lyla up the steps to my mom's front door and knock. Unsurprisingly, my mom answers with quickness. Knowing her, she was probably waiting by the door for us. She jumps at the chance to get her hands on Lyla, ever since I told her that she couldn't come to my house without an invite anymore.

The front door swings open and my mom is standing in the doorway. Lyla turns her head away from my mom and squeezes around my neck tighter. "Ooooh! Finally!" She rubs her hands and holds her arms out. "Come here, Lyla honey..." She doesn't even greet me and honestly, that doesn't bother me. I could care less. I just need her to watch my kid for a little while, she doesn't have to greet me. Me and my mom's relationship is pretty strained, to say the least. I love her though and I know that she loves me, even though we piss each other completely off. "Lyla, come to Grammy, sweeatheart..."

"She hasn't napped yet, so she's sleepy." I hand my mom her bag. "Her pull-ups are in there, her blanket, her dolls and she has an ear infection so I put her medicine in here. Give her three tablespoons in about an hour and three more at 6:00. I'll be back to get her around 11:30 tonight." I rub Lyla's back and prepare to hand her over to my mom. "Alright, Ly...daddy gotta go now."

Lyla finally turns her head towards my mom and when she does, my mom gasps. "Alexander...Michael..." She clamps her hand over her mouth and looks at me like she's getting ready to cry and like she wants to hit me.

"What, ma?" I wrinkle my eyebrows.

"Her face! What happened to her face!?" She yanks Lyla off of me and cradles her face in her hands. "Oh my god..."

"Ma, she fell! She was jumping on the couch and she hit her face on the...the...the coffee table, thing." I stuttered for a second because I'm PISSED that she would even...suggest that I would...I know what she's suggesting. "She fell!"

"A fall wouldn't do that to her face! ALEX, LOOK AT THIS BABY'S FACE!" She grabs Lyla's chin and turns her face toward me. "Someone hit her! _Someone_ hit her!"

"She fell off the couch! She bit her lip and hit her face off the coffee table ma, I swear to god! I was in the kitchen and I heard-"

"Bull. A fall wouldn't do this to her face and even if what you're saying is true, why weren't you watching her?! If you saw her jumping on the couch, why wouldn't you tell her to sit down?!" I open my mouth to explain but she stops me before I can get a word in edgewise. "Look at her face, Alex! This is HORRIBLE! It looks like someone punched her, full force in her face!" She shakes her head at me. "How could you?!"

"I DIDN'T!" I reach out to take Lyla back. Man, screw this. I'm taking her to the daycare at the hospital. I'm not going to sit around and listen to my mom accuse me of hitting my daughter! "Ask her! She fell off the couch, I would NEVER..."

She snatches Lyla away from me. "Alex, just tell me the truth. I know what it's like...when a baby is crying and you can't get it to stop. I know how frustrating it can be when you can't stop the crying. I know what it's like when you get angry, I've been there...so just tell me the truth. Tell me the truth, Alex..."

"I AM! SHE WAS JUMPING ON THE COUCH AND SHE FELL!" I don't mean to raise my voice at my mother but my god, she's irritating the hell out of me. "...I'm not gonna sit here and listen to you accuse me of hitting my daughter. Mom, I don't...I've never gotten irritated with her and even if I did, I would never touch her. Fuck this...gimme my daughter. I'm taking her with me." I snatch her bag out of my mom's hand. "Give me my daughter!"

"Go to hell, Alex. Your story makes no sense and you're sitting here stuttering, trying to explain to me...I know you hit her. I've seen your nasty temper and there's no way this baby fell down, hit her face and did this to herself. Look at her face. Are you really going to tell me that she did this to herself? No, Alex...there's no way. I knew from the start you weren't prepared to take care of her, you should've given her to me from the start. There's no way this baby should still be in diapers, sucking on a pacifier and sleeping with you! You're unprepared as a father, a poor excuse for one and you hit her...you know you did and you're not getting her back off me. You can go to hell for all I care. I can't believe you.." Lyla starts to cry in my mom's arms and eventually, she reaches out to me. "Shh, it's okay honey...it's okay...you're gonna stay here with me for a while..."

"Mom, I swear to god." I bawl my hands up into fists. I really don't want to hit my mom...I'll never hit my mom but I swear to god I'm tempted right now. "I did not hit her. Look at her...why would I hit her? She's my daughter...give her here. She loves me and I love her. Please just give her here. For a minute. I did not hit my daughter. She'll tell you herself." I take Lyla off her anyway, against her wishes and all. "Didn't you fall off the couch, Ly?" She nods her head. She's crying and rubbing her eyes. "Mom, don't do this. She already lost...don't do this. I know I'm not a good dad but I wouldn't dare hurt her more than she's already been hurt. Don't do this. I just really need you to watch her for me. Please don't do this. But trust me on this. I didn't touch her." I kiss Lyla's head. "I didn't..."

"Just tell me the truth, Alex. If you did this to her... I just want to know." She stands there and shakes her head.

"I didn't hit her." I sigh. "Now will you please just watch her? I really have to go to work..."

"Give her here." She holds her arms out again. It's very clear to me that Lyla doesn't want to go to my mom anymore, after hearing her talk to me like that but I know that there's a part of Lyla that doesn't know what's going on. The only thing she knows is that me and my mom were cussing at each other and I think she understands that my mom thinks I hurt her lip and her face. I know she doesn't want me to leave her again and I don't want to leave her either but my dad's not home and I have no other choice. I don't want to have her around all those kids at the daycare knowing how shy she is.

But this will be the LAST time my mom ever babysits for me.

* * *

 **A/N:** For my reviewer named Sarah, I saw your review about how you never saw a toddler that you could consider beautiful and I just wanted to tell you that that comment made me smile so hard for some reason. Idk why, but it did. Also, I forgot that you don't follow me on tumblr or anything like that and almost everyone on here does, so they already have a mental picture of what Lyla looks like since I've posted multiple pictures of her face claim. I never really took it into consideration that some people aren't aware of what I write Lyla to look like because I just assumed that everyone saw her FC on tumblr. The way Lyla looks is sort of hard to describe in words because she is a very...unique looking child.

 **So, for anyone interested in knowing what/who exactly I have in mind when I write Lyla, you can head over to my tumblr and drop something in my ask box and I'll reply with a picture of her FC. My tumblr is flawlesspeasant . tumblr . com for those of you that don't know.**


	10. No Need

I reach across the table and snuff out the flame of my dad's cigarette on a napkin in the napkin holder that sits in the middle of my kitchen table. I don't know how many times I have to tell him that my house is a non-smoking house and I'd appreciate it if he didn't smoke in my house. I've told him this a million times before but he doesn't listen to me. He just ignores me and sparks up an awful-smelling cigarette anyway. "Just because she's sleeping doesn't mean mean you can smoke, dad. I try to keep this crap away from her." I wave the smoke out of the air with my hand and put it back against Lyla's back when I'm done. Just like I expected, she was still taking her nap when I got home from work about half an hour ago. I usually let her sleep for as long as she pleases since she never sleeps longer than an hour, hour and a half tops. When I got home and found that she was still sleeping, I did my usual routine. I told my dad he could stay for a little while and I fixed a pot of coffee and I sat down and talked to my dad for about five minutes before I realized that I really missed my daughter. I missed her like crazy so I went and got her out of my bed. I didn't wake her up, I just held her and carried her around with me. She's lying cuddled up in my arms with her head on my chest and she's out cold. With clear annoyance, my dad shoves his pack of cigarettes back in his jacket pocket and like a little kid that can't help himself, he keeps igniting the flame of his lighter like he has nothing better to do. "...But you don't think mom's gonna do anything, do you? She gave her back, but...It just looked like she had something else that she wasn't telling me. You don't think she'd try to do anything rash...do you, pop?"

My dad puts the lighter down on the table and takes a little sip of his black coffee. "Look Alex, you know ever since Jen went..." His voice trails off and I've been around my father long enough to know that when his voice trails off, he's looking for a way to tell me something he doesn't know how to tell me. I hold my breath and prepare for the worst. "You know your mom's been looking for a reason to take her. You know she's been on your back so tough because she thinks she'd be better off with her. I'm not saying that she's gonna do something big to try and take Lyla for herself but...I'm just saying that maybe you should keep your eyes peeled and your ears open. Just be on your p's and q's from now on. Don't give her a reason to believe baby girl would be better with her. Just be on your game. And from now on, when I can't watch her, take her to the daycare. Don't give her to your mother anymore." He doesn't have to tell me that twice. My mom just lost all chances she ever had at babysitting Lyla. I will never—and I do mean NEVER—take my daughter back over there. My mom just burned so many bridges with me.

When I picked Lyla up from her house at 11:30 last night, my mom tried to act like she didn't want to give her back. Lyla was asleep in the guest bedroom and when my mom answered the door for me, she wouldn't open it up and let me in. She told me that Lyla was asleep and that I should leave her where she was at because she needed some rest. I yanked the door open and went upstairs to get my daughter and the entire time I was repacking her bag, getting her out of the bed and stuff, my mom was standing by the door watching me. It was chilly last night so I went to put her pajama pants on her but I felt that she needed to be changed so while she was sleeping, I changed her pull-up and my mom came over and stood by me...like she thought I was trying to do something to my daughter. She questioned me about why I was changing her when it wasn't necessary, why I felt the need to wipe her when all she did was pee and I swear she was trying to make it seem like I was changing Lyla for my own gratification. I've never come closer to slapping my mother than I did when she was questioning me about changing Lyla. It's bad enough she accused me of hitting my daughter...was that not enough? She had to make it seem like I'm molesting her too? When I say my mom has NO chance of ever seeing my daughter again, I really mean that. I just don't understand how she could've been the one that gave birth to me and raised me. SHE'S the one that raised me and molded me into the kind of man I am and she thinks that I'm a child molester/abuser? Really? My mom doesn't know me at all.

"It just pisses me off how she could even accuse me." I wrap my arms around Lyla's little body and rub the middle of her back while she sleeps. It makes me want to cry the more I think about it. I'm past the point of being pissed off, quite honestly. I spent my entire shift yesterday night at work pissed off and I spent my entire shift this morning pissed off too. Now that I'm sitting here, reflecting on the fact that my mom literally accused me to blacking my child's eye and tried to imply that I was molesting her, I just want to cry about it. "You know how many sick people there are out there in the world, dad? You know how many men don't even want to be bothered with their kids?" My vision gets a little blurry so I reach up and pinch the inner corners of my eyes to prevent the tears from actually spilling over. "I'm trying to do the right thing with mine...and she's making it seem like I'm a monster. It pisses me off but more than that, it scares the hell outta me. What if she does try and do something about it? She can't like..." My efforts at trying to keep the tears at bay are fruitless because before I know it, my cheeks are wet. "She can't like...go ask for custody, can she? She can't do that without a real cause..." I clear my throat and dry my tears. I'm done crying. It was just a brief moment of weakness. "What I mean is...she gotta have a reason, right? She can't just go down to the police or whatever and tell them she wants custody. She has to have them come in and investigate, right?"

"You're asking me like I've gotten my kids taken away from me before." He takes another sip of coffee and doesn't bother wiping his coffee mustache off. "Last time I checked...you, Amber and Aaron were with me until you all turned 18. I don't know how this stuff works either." I roll my eyes at the fact that he's literally useless. He's my dad. He's supposed to be older and wiser than me. It's not his job to sit here and tell me how he raised me, my brother that moved to Georgia to be with his country rock band girlfriend that he met on eHarmony and my sister that lives and works at a clothing store in Miami now. I think my dad senses my annoyance because he scoots his coffee cup away from himself and sits up straight. "But I assume she can't just go tell people that she wants custody. I believe that they would come in, investigate you and the house, find that Lyla is perfectly happy and healthy here and leave you alone. But I really think you're worrying for no reason, Alex. I don't think your mom is going to do anything like that. I just think she wants to be involved in raising Lyla in some big important way and her way of feeling important is through letting you know that she's watching you. You know how your mother can be sometimes...especially if she doesn't take her meds."

"I could give a shit if she takes her meds or not. Her being batshit crazy has nothing to do with her accusing me of hurting my daughter. If she's going to throw around false accusations, she better be completely clear minded when she does it. I was about ten seconds away from slapping the piss outta her, dad. She better be lucky that YOU were the one that taught me to always respect my mother because I swear dad...I almost hit her." Okay so yeah, my mom has some mental issues. She's currently living with Bipolar Disorder and when she's off her meds, she is pretty freaking nuts but she's been on the same meds for YEARS now and they're working just fine for her. She's perfectly fine and she's not too crazy to know that she was accusing me of abusing and molesting my daughter. Her being bipolar has nothing to do with accusing me of serious crap like that. I don't care if she was completely out of her mind; she better know what she's talking about when she accuses me of something that could make me go to jail and lose my daughter. "The only thing that stopped me is the fact that she IS my mother."

"I believe that. I know how irritating that must've been." He runs his fingers through his hair and sighs. He looks down at the watch on his wrist and sighs again. "I gotta go now, Al. I got a couple engines I'm supposed to rebuild today and I if I don't get going now, I just won't get going at all." He scoots out of his chair and stands up. "Call me if you need anything...and call me if your mom tries something else. I'll talk to her about it but I don't know what kind of good that's gonna do." He shoves his arms into his jacket and zips it up. "Lemme give her a kiss..." He stomps over to me in his big, clunky work boots and bends down to give Lyla a kiss. He bypasses her injured cheek and kisses her other one. "Like I said...she didn't touch the oatmeal I made for her and it's in the microwave still...try and feed that to her when she gets up because she's bound to be hungry." He recaps what he told me when I first walked through the door. Apparently Lyla woke up around her usual time of 10:00 and just wanted something to drink and nothing to eat. She sat up and watched TV and played outside in the yard with my dad for an hour before she got tired again and took her nap...she's been sleep ever since. "I'll see you, son." He mumbles and heads for the door.

"Hey dad..." I stop him for a moment, before he can get completely out of my front door. He keeps his hand on the doorknob but looks back at me. "What are you doing for dinner tonight?" I just thought that I should be nice to him and offer dinner tonight. I should probably cook dinner at home tonight instead of feeding Lyla a bunch of takeout, but what's one more night of takeout going to do to her? And besides, I've seen my dad's refrigerator. The only thing he has in there is containers of Hungry Man frozen dinners and that's exactly what he eats every night. "I think me and Lyla are gonna head down to The Lobster Hut again for dinner. I'm in the mood for some crab alfredo and I'll probably get Lyla some of their chicken or something...you're welcome to come with us if you want." I look down at Lyla, only to find that she's in the beginning stages of waking up.

"...That sounds good, actually." He nods, clearly shocked that I offered. I've been meaning to ask my dad to come out to dinner with me and Lyla for the longest time, especially after seeing how he eats nothing but boxed foods all the time but it's been slipping my mind. My dad won't admit it, but I know he's lonesome. He lives alone, spends all his time either alone or with his granddaughter and the only friend I've ever seen him talk to is nurse Michelle up at my job. "Come pick me up around 7...is that cool with you?" I nod my head and look down at Lyla again. Her eyelids are fluttering and I hear her starting to whine. "Alright...see you two then." My dad leaves out of the house, shutting the door behind him and she sound of the door shutting is what really wakes Lyla up. She picks her head up off my chest and looks around.

"Good morning to you." I put my hands underneath her armpits and lift her up. As soon as she sees it's me that she was laying on, she smiles so wide that her pacifier falls out of her mouth. "Did you miss me? I missed you." I bring her down so I can kiss her on her lips and she touches my forehead. "Hi Ly...I missed you." She yawns real big and puts her forehead against mine. "I told you I'd be home when you woke up from your nap, didn't I?" She nods her head rubs her eyes. "Your eye looks better...does it feel better?" She nods again. I gently turn her head to the side and carefully push on her cheekbone, just to ensure that it's not broken. I didn't think it was but I'm just trying to be sure. It really does look better than what it did yesterday. When I got home from work last night, I put one of those special ice packs on her cheek and let her sleep with it on and it worked wonders. Her eye is still just a little bit black but it doesn't look nearly as bad as it did last night. Her lip is still split though. I can tell that she's still trying to formally wake herself up because she's rubbing her eyes and yawning every couple seconds. I sit her on my lap and let her wake up.

I sure hope my dad is right about my mom not doing something as drastic as asking for custody. I don't think she will either but my dad was also right when he said that my mom's been looking for a reason to take Lyla off of me. Both of Jenna's parents died when she was little, so my parents are the only grandparents Lyla has. Jenna's dad committed suicide when she was still a baby and her mom died of cancer when she was 12. When Jenna actually passed on, the first thing my mom asked me is if I can handle Lyla. She didn't tell me how sorry she was, she didn't ask me if I was okay. Instead, she asked me if I could handle my daughter. That was the first bridge my mom burned with me. Of course, I told her that I could handle my daughter. I told her that I was gonna do my best and she told me that my best might not be good enough and if I wanted Lyla to have a chance, I should let her take care of her. I told her to piss off and that was the end of that. Ever since I told her no initially, she's been looking for any reason she can find to prove to me that I'm not as equipped to take care of her as I thought. My mom really wants to take my daughter from me for some reason.

Even if I was the worst father in the world, I still wouldn't let my mom take Lyla. One of the last things I ever promised my wife was that I would take care of our daughter. Jenna was very specific with me. She told me that she wanted Lyla to remain with me and she wanted me to be the best dad I could possibly be to our little girl and I'm not taking that promise lightly. She made me promise that Lyla wasn't going to miss out. She made me promise that Lyla would still have someone there for her to cry to, to teach her about being a woman and to teach her about all the things little girls need to be taught. When I made that promise to my wife, I really meant that. I would die before I let my mom take my daughter.

I bite my lip just thinking about all the things I promised Jenna on her deathbed. When she was too far gone that the doctors couldn't help her, she asked to come home. She wanted to spend her last days at home in her own bed and the doctors told her that she could. She laid upstairs in our bed for two weeks before she went. Her last two weeks were spent cuddling with Lyla and giving me instructions, wishes and things she wanted me to see to. She wrote Lyla a bunch of letters that she's supposed to open at different times in her life. I keep the letters upstairs in my closet, on the top shelf. She wrote me a couple too but I don't think I'm strong enough to open them just yet. Someday I will be, but not today and not yet. I promised her that I would take care of our daughter. I promised her that Lyla wouldn't miss out on what it's like to have a mom because I would be her mother and her father. I promised her that I would make our little girl the most important person in my world. I promised her that I would keep up with tea parties, Barbie doll games and movie night. I promised her that I wouldn't let Lyla forget about her. I promised her that I would miss her, but not so much that I stopped living my own life. She tried to make me promise her that I'd move on eventually but I didn't promise her that. I couldn't promise her that. I'm only 30 years old but I was with Jenna for 14 years total...we started dating when we were 16 and we got married when we were 23. Jenna was the love of my life and I couldn't promise her that I would find someone else. I don't want to find anyone else.

"...Dada." Lyla finally stops rubbing her eyes and calls my name. She doesn't turn her head to look at me or anything, she just calls my name. She keeps looking straight, unblinking. "I see mama when I sleep..." She scratches her head. "Her hug me and we play tea party. I go to heabben now?"

"...Not yet." I rub her chubby stomach and kiss the top of her head. It's not the first time she's dreamt about Jenna. Sitting here thinking about Jenna, I realize that I've been doing a pretty shitty job at holding up my end of the promises. Granted, Lyla hasn't really been in the mood to play Barbies and tea party and stuff like that but even if she was, I haven't been keeping up with them. "...Ly, we're gonna go to the lobster tank for dinner again tonight...with pappy, okay?" She nods her head and yawns once again. "You wanna build a tent when we come home? And we can sleep in it tonight? Like mommy used to?" I watch a smile spread across her face. "When we come home from the lobster tank, we can take a bath and build a tent and then we can watch movies in it and sleep in it."

I had a feeling she'd like that.

 **X X X**

"You have to wear your white shoes, Ly. Purple ones won't match your outfit." I kneel down on the floor in front of the step that she's sitting on and untie her white Nike sneakers. I dressed her in a pair of blue jeans and a yellow t-shirt that has a red sparkly heart on the front. She came downstairs herself and started putting her shoes on and any other time, I would let her put on purple shoes if she wanted to wear purple shoes. We're going to The Lobster Hut though and I can't have her walking around wearing purple shoes that don't match in a fancy restaurant. Once I have her Nikes untied and loosened up, I take the purple sandals she was about to shove over her pink socks out of her hands. She whines and pokes her lip out at me. "Purple shoes won't match, sweetness. White shoes match your outfit and you can't wear sandals over your socks." She just looks at me like she's really trying to comprehend what I'm saying but she's not understanding. "...Your shirt is yellow and red, baby girl. You can't wear purple shoes with a yellow and red shirt. It doesn't match...got it?" I shove her feet into her sneakers and begin to tie them. "Got it?" I ask her again. She nods her head and cooperates with me while I put her shoes on.

If there's one thing I'm getting better at, it's dressing her up. Jenna always had a way of making Lyla look like she stepped out of a child modeling magazine but me on the other hand... I'm getting better though. I found a red ponytail holder that has sparkly ribbon hanging off of it and I tied her ponytail back with it. Her silky, long, light brown hair hangs lower than the sparkly red ribbon on her ponytail holder but I think it looks cute that way. Lyla has long hair for a three year old but Jenna always kept it cut to a manageable length. It could be longer than what it is. It just comes to the middle of her back when it's out and when it's in a ponytail, it comes past her neck. I tie both her shoelaces and help her stand up. "Pappy comin' daddy?" She holds my hand and looks up at me. "Pappy comin'?"

"Yeah, pappy's coming. We gotta go get him though." I open the front door and help her through it. It's easier to just pick her up and carry her wherever I need her to go but she actually wants to walk so I'll let her. I hold her hand and guide her as we walk down the steps to get to the car. Of course, Mrs. Jensen just so happens to be walking her dog at this very moment. I don't want to be rude and ignore her, plus I know that once Lyla sees the dog she's gonna want to pet it. So I open up the gate and lead Lyla through it so I can have my unwanted talk with Mrs. Jensen and she can pet the dog. "You see Gibby, Ly? You wanna say hi to him?" She lets go of my hand and runs to greet the dog. Mrs. Jensen gives Lyla's back a pat but Lyla of course, ignores her and goes straight for the dog. I walk towards where the three of them are standing. "Good evening." I mumble.

"Good evening, Alex." She smiles at me and intently watches Lyla. Lyla is kneeling on the ground and letting Gibby lick her hands. I make a mental note to take her to the restroom and wash them once we get to the restaurant. "I see baby girl has a battle wound...what happened?"

"She took a spill off the couch, even though I told her not to jump on it." I watch the dog to make sure he's not getting finicky with Lyla or growling at her. Lyla's gently petting his head and kissing his "cheek" like she always does when she sees him. She and the dog have a cool relationship. I think she's the only one the dog actually likes, Mrs. Jensen included. The dog hates everyone including his owner. The only one he's not an absolute dick to is my daughter and I don't quite know my. The dog is an asshole though. He takes every opportunity to piss all over my bushes, my gate and the tires on my car. Mrs. Jensen won't admit it, but her dog pissing all over my bushes is the reason the rosebuds don't grow on it anymore. It used to be a rosebush before her asshole of a dog began to piss on it. "She got pretty banged up, but she's okay."

"Aw, poor baby." She reaches down and strokes Lyla's side bangs back. "Good thing her daddy's a doctor, huh?" See, this just goes to show how ridiculous my mom's being about this whole thing. How is it that I can tell the neighbor that hardly knows me, that Lyla fell off the couch and hit her face and she believes me? Everyone in this damn neighborhood knows I wouldn't hurt my daughter. Is it too much to ask for, for her to believe me on this? "You probably nursed it back to health, didn't you?" I nod my head and continue to watch Lyla and the dog. I hate to break up their long-awaited reunion but we really need to get going. We need to go grab my dad and I didn't make reservations this time so we're probably gonna have to wait in line for a while. I'm trying to have Lyla home by at least 9:30 so we have enough time to watch at least one movie in the tent. I don't work tomorrow so we can stay up for as long as we need to but I know Lyla won't stay up any later than 12:30 or 1:00. She'll be too sleepy. "Oh yeah, I've been meaning to tell you...I talked to the new girl."

"You did?" I raise my eyebrows. So she did talk to the poor girl. I hope she didn't harass her too badly. Poor girl probably wants to move away from the nosy ass neighbors already. "What happened?" This time, I'm actually not pretending to be interested in our conversation. For the first time since I've ever talked to Mrs. Jensen, I'm actually interested in what she has to say.

"She seems like a really nice girl. She's 29 and she's a waitress right now but she has a teaching degree in...math, I think she said. She moved here from Massachusetts. No family down here, no friends...it's just her and she's from up north. I had a long conversation with her. She seems really sweet." I'm not surprised. I could see just from her carrying her groceries that she was pretty tame and easy going. I am a little surprised that she's 29 though. She looked younger than that when I saw her. "Her name is Jo Wilson, she said. Very sweet girl...and she's quite pretty, if I do say so. She's a beautiful girl."

"Really?" I nod. "Sounds like a cool girl to have on the block." I shrug my shoulders. "Come on Lyla...we gotta go now honey. Pappy's probably waiting." Lyla gives Gibby one last pat on his head and returns back to my side, nestling her hand inside mine. "Tell Mrs. Jensen and Gibby buh-byes, Ly. Tell 'em bye."

"Bye bye." Lyla actually waves at the two of them, which surprises me.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"Razzle 'n' a dazzle 'n' a flash a little light television lover, baby, go all night. Sometime, anytime, sugar me sweet. Little miss innocent sugar me." Luke prances around me, carrying an empty pitcher with nothing but ice inside it. He shakes his butt on his way to the soda fountain to fill it up and keeps singing, giving me and Macy our own private concert to the cruddy music that's playing over the speakers in the bar. He's been doing this all day; singing along and acting like he's in a music video to any song that comes on. No matter what song it is, he knows the words and takes it upon himself to entertain Macy and I. A little earlier, I fell victim to one of his lapdances. It was slow around 4:00 so I sat down and took my break at the bar and "Piece of My Heart" by Janis Joplin came on and he started "twerking" on my lap. Luke's the greatest thing I've ever come across in my entire 29 years and a month that I've been alive. I'm busy counting out Macy's charge tips when Luke gallops over to me and starts rubbing my hair while he sings. "So c'mon, take a bottle, shake it up...break the bubble, break it up, Jo!" I bite my lip to keep from laughing because if I laugh, I'll lose count and I'm already 93 dollars deep. He stands behind me and puts his hands on my hips. "POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME...IN THE NAME OF LOVE!" He makes me shake my butt and I can't fight it anymore. I put the charge tips down and bust out in laughter.

"Stop messing with me! You already twerked on me, now you're trying to make me dance...stop it." I try to remember that I was at 95 bucks when I stopped counting. Macy's shift is over in 15 minutes so she needs her charge tips ASAP and I'm supposed to count them out for her but it's kind of hard to do when Luke won't let me count without making me crack up laughing. Charge tips are tips that people leave on their debit or credit cards. At the end of our shifts, whichever waitress is free is the one in charge of cashing out the charge tips. I'm free so I have to take care of Macy's charge tips. I think Kaylee is coming in to relieve Macy. Luke goes over to the soda fountain and fills up the pitchers he was carrying, still mouthing the lyrics to "Pour Some Sugar" by Def Leppard. I finally finish Macy's charge tips at $105. "Here, Mace." I tie a rubber band around her stack of money and hand it to her. "105."

"Thanks, J." She stuffs the money in the front pocket of her apron and starts wiping off the bar counter. She's trying to finish all her cleanups so she can leave already. When people are coming to relieve us, we're allowed to leave as soon as our relief comes in but we have to make sure we finish our cleanups first. Kaylee just came back from clocking in, in the break room and she's standing by waiting for Macy to finish. I think it's safe to say that my coworkers like me. They've all been really nice to me and as far as I can tell, they haven't been annoyed by my constant questions. They've been super helpful. Oh, and they all have their own nicknames for me. Lucille calls me "sweetie" and when I asked her why she did yesterday, she told me it's because I was "sweet as I wanna be." Luke calls me Jojobear, Kaylee calls me "Jays" and Macy calls me "J." I'm still just learning everyone's names and I haven't come up with nicknames yet...except for Luke. He's my "Lukeypoo" and if you count "Mace" as a nickname for Macy, then she has one too I guess. Macy finishes her cleanups and puts everything back underneath the bar table. "I'll see you guys later..."

"Bye, Mace." I wave at her and put away the moneybox that's used to count out charge tips. It's 7:15, which means my shift isn't over for another three hours and 45 minutes. I can't wait to go home, take a bath, eat something that doesn't come from the ocean, take an Aspirin and lie down. I'm not particularly tired, but my first real shift on my own is kicking my ass and my hips are throbbing. I didn't realize how hard it was going to be to be on my feet all day. On the plus side, I didn't screw anything up today. I remembered the soup of the day, I didn't drop anyone's tray and I didn't screw up anyone's order. The tables are still numbered for me though. I'm not all that good with the tables just yet. "...Is it illegal to consume alcohol on the job?" I lock the moneybox back up and grab a bar menu. The dinner rush slowed down a whole lot so now, I'm just sitting around waiting for something to do. "Because I could really use a martini...or maybe just an ice cold beer."

"It's not illegal, but it tends to be frowned upon in this establishment." Kaylee answers me as she's tying her apron around her waist to prepare for her shift. "But if you won't tell, I won't tell. I'm always tempted to make myself drinks." I laugh and continue to flip through the menu to see all the alcoholic beverages this place has to offer. I was just joking about drinking on the job. I would never do anything to risk losing this job for one, and for two, I don't drink anymore. I just don't. I tend to...not be aware of my limit, so I've just decided to do away with alcohol completely. Kaylee stands next to me and leans against the counter. "What's it been like today? Busy? Slow?"

"It was busy for a while with the dinner rush and all. It just got slow." I close the menu and stick it back in the menu holder that sits in the middle of the bar counter. I find myself tapping my fingers and silently mouthing the words to the song that just started playing in place of Def Leppard. "Your body is a wonderland...your body is a wonder I don't use my hands..." I merely whisper. I clear my throat and look at Kaylee again. "So what section do you have? I'm in 10..." Section 10 is the most boring section ever and that's exactly why Tony gave me section 10 for my first day. He didn't want to overwhelm me. He could've stuck me in section four or section five. Those sections are the real busy ones because 1, they're smoking sections and 2, they're close to the bathroom. I can't wait to start working section 1-5 though. Sections 1-5 are outside sections. There's a set of double doors next to the entrance that leads out to a patio and there are a bunch more tables out there. Sections 1-5 don't open until Fourth of July weekend though.

"They stuck me in sections seven, eight and nine." She mumbles, scribbling an imaginary picture on the bar counter with her finger. The loud seashore bell dings to let us know that someone is coming through the door and since both Kaylee and I heard it, our heads lift up and we look at the same time. "Oh sweet lord." Kaylee mumbles under her breath after seeing who it is. She drops everything she's doing to rush over to the soda fountain where Luke still is. I roll my eyes at the both of them geeking out over our latest customer. It's that guy and his daughter again. Why won't they just let the poor man come out in public in peace? It's not long before Kaylee and Luke are both standing at my side again, trying to be subtle with their staring at the man but failing miserably. "Please let Stephen sit him in my section." Kaylee is literally praying right now. "Section 7, 8 or 9 Stephen...please."

"Mmm...let him sit him in my section." Luke licks his lips. "I'll slip him a whole free lobster tail just for being fine as hell."

"He's not even gay, Luke." Kaylee nudges him with her elbow.

"He ain't gotta be. It's perfectly fine if he's not." Luke shrugs and makes me laugh.

"...Hey Lukey, are you...are you the..." I bite my lip. I've been wanting to ask him this ever since I found out he was gay and I finally feel like we're at an okay place in our relationship for me to ask him. I just don't know how to ask him though. I swallow my pride. "Are you the pitcher or the catcher? Which do you prefer?" I just blurt it out.

"I'm the pitcher, girl. Always the pitcher. Don't mind catching a few innings, but I love pitching." He answers me like it's the most normal thing I could've asked him. "I'd catch for him though. Look at that man..." Stephen, our hostess, takes the two men and the pretty little girl back through sections 1-8. I crane my neck a little bit to see where he's gonna sit them. I think they asked for a booth or something because they're walking past a bunch of empty tables and full booths. They stop in section 10, it looks like. My section... Stephen puts the menus down on the table and sure enough, they sit in my section. The man...Alex is his name, he puts his daughter down in the booth and he sits at the end of it. The other man sits across from them. "Goddammit. Who's section 10?!" Luke stomps his foot.

"Isn't that your section, Jo?" Kaylee asks me and while I'm adjusting my apron and preparing to go serve them, I just nod my head at her. "Do you wanna trade?"

"No." I shake my head and give both of them an annoying smirk. "I'm not fueling either one of you guys' creepy obsessions with that poor guy. He just wants to eat dinner and he doesn't deserve plates full of drool from either one of you." I pick up my notepad off the bar counter. "See you later guys." I pull the strings on my apron a little tighter, grab three rolls of silverware and rush back to my section. They're the only people sitting in my section,which isn't really that surprising. It's been that way all day. I've only ever had one person in my section all day. As I approach their table, I notice that Alex and the other guy are in deep conversation and the little girl is scribbling on the kids' menu with the crayons we give. She's so well-behaved as compared to what I'm used to. I'm used to seeing children act a fool in this restaurant. I plaster my customer service smile on my face and walk over to their table. "Hello, I'm Jo...I'm gonna be taking care of you guys today." I place the silverware in the middle of their table and take my notepad out of my apron pocket. "Can I start you off with something to drink? We have Coke products."

The other man looks at me first. "Yeah hey hon...I'll take a Coke with a side of Coors Lite, if you don't mind. And can I have a glass of ice for that?"

"Sure." I smile and write that on my notepad. "And for you, sir?" I turn to Alex this time. He's looking at the menu instead of at me so I take the opportunity to make myself familiar with him. After all, he is my neighbor. I tilt my head to the side a little and feel my eyebrows wrinkle up as I look at him. He has very thick, wavy dark brown hair that spins off in a thousand different directions like he hasn't brushed it. From his side profile, I can see that he has long, pretty eyelashes and a stubby nose. His lips are thin and very full, a soft pink color. His eyes are crossed between dark brown and dark green and his eyebrows are thick and as unruly as his hair is. My eyes flicker down below his neck. He's a big guy, to say the least. He has broad, muscular shoulders and thick arms. He _is_ nice looking.

"Can I have a Dr. Pepper?" He closes his menu and looks up at me, showing me his eyes from a frontal view. They're very warm, welcoming even but I can see behind them that he's not happy. I blankly nod my head at him and mindlessly write that on my notepad too. "And don't you guys have apple juice? Can I have one of those?" I nod again and write.

"Do you guys want to put in any appetizers at this time or do you still need a chance to think about it?" I keep my notepad and my pen in my hand and look at all three of them. The little girl couldn't be interested in anything but the picture she's drawing right now.

"We're gonna need to think about that, hon." The other man answers for all three of them and the more I look at him, the more I realize that he kind of looks like Alex so I go ahead and assume that he's his dad.

"Alight, no problem. I'll be right back with your drinks." I smile at them again and turn to leave. I bustle back to the bar and grab two tall glasses and a kiddy cup. "Luke, can you grab me a Coors from the cooler in the back?" I yell out to him as I fill up the two cups with ice from the ice maker. I push the glasses against the soda buttons and fill them up, one with a Coke and the other with a Dr. Pepper. Luke seems to be busy himself but he puts a can of beer next to me anyway. "Thanks." I put the two glasses of soda on a tray and fill the kiddy cup up with apple juice. I fill an extra glass up with ice just like the older man asked and shove everything onto one tray. I'm sure both Luke and Kaylee will have their fair share of questions for me once this is all done and over with. I balance the tray on my one hand and open the gate with the other hand. I swiftly walk back towards their table and find that both the men are now interested in the toddler's drawing. I put the tray down on the edge of the table. "Dr. Pepper..." I stick the Dr. Pepper in front of Alex. "Coke...Coors Lite with a side of ice." I put the Coke, the glass of ice and the beer in front of his dad. "And an apple juice." I politely reach across and put the kiddy cup in front of the little girl. I put three straws on the table from my apron pocket and stand up straight. "Are you guys ready to order?"

"Yeah, one second..." Alex mumbles at me, still glossing through the menu. The little girl is looking at me from the corner of her eye but she seems entirely too shy to make complete eye contact with me. She climbs over to her dad, whispers something in his ear, looks at me again and sits back down. Alex glances at me for a second after she whispers. "Yeah Ly, that's a lobster...her name's on the lobster. It's her name tag." He mumbles to her.

She looks at my name tag again and looks away. She picks up a crayon and starts drawing, periodically looking at my name tag as if she's trying to draw it. "...Would you like it so you can look at it better?" I put my notepad and my pen back in my apron and start unpinning my name tag from my shirt. I hold it in my hand and offer it to her. "Here you go..." She looks like she wants to take it from me but she's hesitant. She nudges her dad's arm with her elbow and points to it.

"What do you say, Ly?" Alex takes my name tag out of my hand and hands it to his daughter. "Tell her thank you." The little girl puts my name tag down next to her paper and starts drawing it better. "Lyla, tell her thank you."

"...Thank you." She says to me but as soon as she says it, she hides her face in his shoulder blade. She's so stinking cute.

"You're welcome." I take my notepad and my pen back out of my apron again. "Is your name Lyla? I like your name." I thought that the nosy old woman that came to talk to me said her name was Layla. I must've misheard her.

"...Wuss your name?" She stops drawing and looks up at me.

"Jo." I tell her and when I do, she goes back to drawing. I think she's naturally that shy. I don't think she's putting on an act or exaggerating.

"We're ready to order." The other man closes his menu. I nod and click my pen open. "I'll take the clam dinner with a side of mashed potatoes and dinner rolls. I want to add a side of clam chowder to that too, hon." I scribble that down and turn to Alex.

"I'll have the crab meat alfredo. Side of dinner rolls and chicken noodle soup, please." I write that down. "Lyla, do you want crab legs, chicken or shrimp?"

"...Ticken." She says to her dad and continues scribbling. She's coloring on my name tag but I decide not to mention it. It's nothing that soap and water and scrubbing won't get off.

"Can I have the chicken tender dinner off the kid menu? She'll take french fries with that and applesauce." I nod and as he rattles it off, I write it down. "And we'll take a basket of popcorn shrimp for an appetizer. Can we have cocktail—Lyla, NO!" He snatches my name tag off of her. "NO! Crayons are for paper! You know that!" He looks at my name tag and shakes his head. "I'm sorry." He hands it back to me. "I didn't realize she was coloring on it. I'm so sorry, I'll pay to replace it...how much is it?"

"No need." I shake my head and pop my name tag into my apron pocket. I start gathering up their menus. "It'll come right off, she's fine." I smile at the three of them. "I'm gonna go put your orders right in and I'll be out with your shrimp." I put everything in my apron pocket again. "It was nice to meet you, Lyla...bye." I wave at her. She waves back at me and keeps her head down now that she got in trouble. I turn around to take their orders back to the kitchen when something stops me. "Wait um, Alex..." Oops... I just used his name. He probably thinks I'm weird now. Damn. Oh freak. I've never been this embarrassed in my life. And I know my cheeks are probably read right now. Damn. "Did you..." I sigh. I'm so embarrassed...and the look on his face clearly shows that he knows it. He's looking at me with a slight smirk. "Did you want cocktail sauce? Is that what you were trying to say?" Should I explain to him that the only reason I know his name is because our nosy neighbor told me? I don't want to seem like I'm just like Luke and Kaylee with the creepy crush on him because that's not it. I only know his name because we're neighbors. I should probably explain that...shouldn't I?

He hands me the menus from the table with a cheeky smirk...it's as if he's laughing at my creepy obsession with him and I swear it's not like that. I need to explain. I can explain. "Yeah...cocktail sauce would be nice...Jo." He throws my name in at the last second which makes me smirk back at him. I politely take the menus off of him and turn to take his order back to the kitchen.


	11. My New Friend

One of my favorite things to do in the summertime is ride through Millerton after dark. I know that probably sounds silly but I swear it's true. During the day, Millerton doesn't exactly look like the typical Florida beach side town. In fact, the only indication that Millerton is close to the ocean during the day is the occasional squawking of seagulls that fly overhead at times and the smell of the sea salt wafting through the air from the water. But at night, Millerton is a totally different story. The soft glow of the streetlights make the outlines of the palm trees show and off in a slight distance, the boardwalk is visible. The lights from the boardwalk shine down on the ocean and the gentle rolling waves crashing in cause the light in the water to flicker and it's a really neat sight to see. Before we even had Lyla, Jenna and I used to ride around town in our old Jeep with the windows down and country music playing softly in the background. Country music was Jenna's absolute favorite. I'm not really a fan of it, but she always told me that I didn't know what I was missing out on because country music tells the best stories. I prefer rock and roll...or at least, I used to. There are a few country songs that I like but I'd never tell Jenna that. Looking back at it, my wife kind of reminds me of a country song. Not with the weirdly deep voice and the story being told, but by the way she looked is what I mean. A lot of times, she dressed like she stepped straight out of a country music video. She had long, smooth legs and a head full of thick brunette curls that fell towards the middle of her back. She had the same green eyes that our daughter has, round rosy cheeks and a smile that was continually perfect due to the three years she spent wearing braces back in middle school. That was the Jenna I remember and the Jenna I want Lyla to remember as well. I don't like to think about how she had no hair when she passed and how hollowed out her cheeks were. I especially don't like to think about the fact that I can't remember the last time she flashed me that smile before she passed.

Deep in my thoughts, I absentmindedly turn the steering wheel to the left so I can get on the road that'll take my dad home. I've been thinking about Jenna an awful lot lately. I mean, I think about her every day, multiple times a day, but she's really been on my mind lately. I don't know if it's because Lyla's been asking about her a lot lately or if it's because it's going on seven months that she's been gone now but for some reason, she's been heavy on my mind. "...What do you work next week, pop?" I start slowing down since we're finally on his street. "I work all mornings next week, no afternoons. Are you free?" I pull into his driveway. "I really don't want to take her to the daycare. I don't think that taking her there is a good idea, with her being shy and all." I park in his driveway. "I really should find her another babysitter for when you're not around."

"I don't think that's a bad idea." He gathers up his takeout container. "I don't have anything for this week though. I can watch her all week. But yeah, you really should get another backup sitter. It's a shame your mother can't do it anymore."

"Mom's never watching her again and I mean that. For as long as I live, mom will never watch her again. I'll take Lyla to work with me before I ever let mom watch her again, dad." I keep my hands around the steering wheel but I lean back and turn my head to see her. She's sitting in her seat gnawing on the cookie she got from the restaurant and looking at something on my phone. I think she's attempting to play Candy Crush, but I'm not sure. She just asked for it and I handed it to her. "I think I'm gonna ask my neighbor, Mrs. Jensen. She'll do it and it'll only be when you can't, so it's not like she'd be with her all the time."

"Well let me know what she says. If she can't do it, I'll work something out with my scheduling and stuff. She might have to spend some time down at the shop with me but I'm assuming you won't mind her being at the shop as long as she's not at your mothers, am I right?" I shrug my shoulders. To be honest, I don't care what happens with Lyla while I'm at work. She can stay with Mrs. Jensen or my dad, I don't care where they take her or where they watch her at. I just don't want her around my mother so whatever has to happen in order to ensure that she won't be around my mom, I don't care. My dad understands how I feel about my dad. We talked about it over dinner and I made it clear that my mom is dead to me. He wishes that I would still try to have a relationship with my mom but he also understands why I don't want to. "Al..." He mutters my name before he gets out of the car. "How do you know that waitress again?"

"The waitress?" I wrinkle my brow and look at him. Oh, he means the girl that waited on us tonight. "Oh, her. I um...I don't really know her. I know _of_ her but I don't really know her." I wonder why he's asking about Jo all of a sudden. He didn't ask about her the entire ride home but he's asking about her now and that makes me wonder why. "Why?" I ask.

"No reason." He shakes his head. "She seems to know you though...you two are on a first name basis so I thought you met her somewhere." He opens up the car door. "I thought maybe she was a friend of Jen's or something. She's cute...and she seemed to be nice. Reminded me of Jen a little bit."

"Oh, no. I don't really know her. She lives down the street though. She's the one that moved into the McKinley place. That's probably how she knows me." I shrug my shoulders once again. "Everyone on my block knows me, dad. It's not everyday you see a bachelor with a daughter here in Millerton. Word on the street is that she came from Massachusetts though, so I doubt she was a friend of Jenna's or anything like that. We're just neighbors." I glance back at Lyla again, this time through the mirror. I catch her mid-yawn, but she's still looking at my phone and eating her cookie. "I really gotta get her home before she crashes in the backseat." I help him grab all his takeout containers so he doesn't miss anything. "I'll see you later, pop."

"See you, Alex. Give her goodnight kisses for me." He gets out of my car and shuts the door behind him. I stick around for a few moments just to make sure he gets in the house. As soon as I see his door open, I put my car in reverse and back out of his driveway. I make the turn that'll take me and Lyla home and now that I sort of know the girl that lives there, I glance through the passenger's side window at the old McKinley place. It still looks completely scary but even through the darkness, I can tell that it's being fixed up. The porch doesn't look so cluttered with leaves and sticks and it doesn't look abandoned anymore. The lights are off and the house looks all locked up, probably because she's still at work. Being that she house is virtually empty when she's not in it, I guess Mrs. Jensen was right when she said that she lives here alone. I do wonder why she felt the need to move to a totally different state, without knowing anyone and without having family but I guess she probably has her reasons and it's not up to me to judge.

After officially meeting her today, I have to say that I think I like her. It was a little weird that she thought it was okay to just use my name like we were actually friends, but I found that a bit endearing. It was funny because after she said my name, the look on her face was an immediate "oh crap" kind of look. I wasn't really surprised that she knew my name though. Everyone in this damn town knows my name and even if she didn't know my name from Mrs. Jensen, I would assume that one of her coworkers told her who I am. Every time I walk into that restaurant, someone is either pointing at me or looking at me with hearts in their eyes. It's not that I mind women thinking I'm attractive, it just gets annoying sometimes when women throw their asses at me and expect me to catch it. I just feel like if they're infatuated with me enough to ask me out, they should be infatuated enough to know that I just lost my damn wife and even if I was interested in them, I'm not ready to start dating yet. It makes me wonder just how long women think is long enough for grieving. Anyway, when she used my name, I could tell that she was completely humiliated, which is why I called her by her name as well. I didn't want her to be humiliated while she was serving me and I didn't want her to think I thought she was weird because I don't. It was strange to hear her call me by my name when I had never spoken to her prior to her serving me but I understand that it slipped, that she only knows my name from hearing about me and I don't think she's creepy or a weird for it.

I park my car in my driveway and turn it off. I get out of the car and walk towards the back so I can get Lyla out. She already unstrapped herself and she's just waiting for me. "I thought you fell asleep on me, you're so quiet back here." I pick her up and kiss her cheek. Her cheek tastes sweet, probably because she got cookie all over it. I already gave her a bath before we went to the restaurant so I won't bathe her again but I will clean the cookie off her cheek with a rag. "You ready to make a tent?" She nods her head and licks cookie icing off her thumb. She holds her hand by my mouth, offering me a bite. "...No thanks, Ly. You go 'head and eat it." The cookie is soggy and barely even a cookie anymore. I carry her into the house and put her down once we get inside. "Daddy's gonna make the tent...you go upstairs and put some jammies on, okay? Go put some jammies on." She nods but doesn't even move. "...You done with that?" I kneel down in front of her and unzip her jacket. "You done with your cookie?" She shakes her head. "Okay, well let daddy take it." I take it out of her hand. "You go put jammies on and your cookie will be waiting for you." She holds onto my shoulder and kicks off her sneakers. "Go 'head Ly." She turns around and climbs up the steps on all fours. I watch her until she gets to the top to make sure she doesn't fall and once she's up there, I go into the living room. I put her soggy barely-cookie down on the coffee table and look around, trying to figure out where I should start. To save time, I brought all the blankets I'm going to need into the living room before we went out to eat. I still don't know where to start though.

I never watched Jenna make a tent before so I don't really know how she did it. I decide to start by moving the coffee table out of the way. I pick it up and carry it into the dining room so it's out of the way. I pick up the thick quilt I brought out of the blanket closet and spread it out on the floor. I pile a couple more old quilts on top of the one I already put down and step on it to make sure it's soft. It's soft, but still sort of hard but it's a floor so I don't expect much. I dump all the pillows I carried downstairs earlier onto the floor and prop them against the bottom of the couch. I pick up the big blanket, the one that I _know_ Jenna used for the tent part. I unfold the blanket and walk it over to the TV. I want to be able to watch TV from inside this tent thing so I drape the blanket over the entire flat screen TV set and tuck it underneath the base of it to keep it from falling. I pull the blanket all the way to the couch and drape it over the back of the couch. I lift up the side of it to make sure it's not hanging too low on the inside. It's not the same as Jenna used to make it but it's pretty darn close. I pop a movie called "The Book of Life" into the DVD player and put it on pause until we're ready to watch it. I go into the kitchen and look in the pantry for a package of popcorn.

When I slide the package of popcorn off the top shelf of the pantry, a loose paper comes tumbling down off the shelf. The paper hits the ground and slides across the floor and stops once it hits the counter. I put the popcorn on the counter and kneel down to pick up the paper—which happens to be a picture—and immediately I wish I hadn't picked it up. I don't know what it was doing up underneath the popcorn box, but I have good reason to believe that it was under there for a reason and it should've stayed under there. It's a picture of me, Jenna and Lyla on Lyla's second birthday. Jenna's holding Ly, her thick brunette hair tied back in a ponytail and her eyes closed because the picture was snapped mid-laugh. Lyla's face is cracked up and she's crying and I remember it being because she was pissed that Jenna and I smashed her face into the cake. She has cake icing all over her nose, cheeks and mouth and she's crying. I'm trying to wipe the icing off her face with a yellow washcloth and I'm laughing too. Damn, I remember this day like it was yesterday. We had her party at the indoor kiddie park down in Murraysville. Lyla was already mad that we dragged her out of the jungle gym to sing happy birthday, she was furious once we smashed the cake in her face. It was all Jenna's idea to smash the cake in her face though.

Her party was animal themed because for a while there, Lyla was obsessed with the zoo and all the animals in the zoo. I still think she kind of likes animals with the way she acts towards Mrs. Jensen's dog, but when I say she was OBSESSED with animals, I do mean she was obsessed. We had zebras and lions and elephants on her cake and a leopard print outfit we dressed her in. I had the idea to buy her a squish cake so we wouldn't have to smash her face in a piece of cake. I thought maybe we could just put the squish cake in front of her and let her tear it apart. But Jenna had another idea. She picked the cake up and smashed Ly's whole entire face in it and Ly was PISSED. Jenna laughed but she felt really bad afterwards and cleaned her face off for her. Lyla had icing all up her nose...it was the greatest day.

As I look down at the picture, a drop of water splashes down on it without warning. I didn't even feel like I was getting ready to cry. One minute I was looking at the picture and the next thing I know, I have tears coming out of my eyes. I sniff and touch my cheeks, only to find that they really are wet with tears. I put the picture inside the junk drawer next to the fridge and hold onto the counter while I get ahold of myself. I pinch the bridge of my nose and try to pull it together. I just never thought that this is how my live was going to go, that's all. I met Jenna when I was 16 and immediately, I knew that she was it. She was a cheerleader and I was the typical jock, football player, wrestler, I played baseball for a year. We had mutual friends and they introduced us to each other and we just hit it off. We dated all throughout high school and we went to the same college. I asked her to marry me when she graduated with a degree in Psychology and I graduated with my degree in Biology. We got married before I started medical school and we were together for 14 years. 14 long, happy years.

It all happened so suddenly. Like one day, she was cutting up strawberries to make Lyla a fruit salad and her fingertips went numb. She thought it was just Carpal Tunnel because as a college Psychology professor, she spent a lot of time typing. We didn't think it was any big deal...which is why we scheduled her doctor's appointment for two weeks later. The day after we scheduled her appointment, I was sitting at the kitchen table while she was fixing breakfast and she was talking to me about how the car needed an oil change. And all of a sudden, her speech got all slurred and she had to sit down. Come to find out, she had stage four Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and less than three months to live. She fought it...did chemo, radiation, dialysis and all that. And she extended her three months to a year. See, that's what I mean about life and how it tends to suck sometimes. One minute, you can be living happily with your beautiful wife, beautiful daughter and beautiful house. Then the next second, your wife died of cancer when she was 30 and your daughter won't speak. I don't understand this thing we call life.

"Dada, where my coopie?" Lyla's tiny little mouse voice cuts through the silence in the kitchen and since she's in here with me now, I wipe my face and sniff, trying to pull myself together before I turn around and face her. If she sees me crying, she'll start crying and I don't want that. I clear my throat, rub my eyes and turn around. "...My coopie, dada...where?" She's standing in the doorway of the kitchen wearing one of my t-shirts and sucking on a pacifier. Needless to say, my t-shirt comes all the way down to her feet and she's standing on it and the head hole is entirely too big for her. Her chest is hanging out the head hole and her arms are inside the arm holes but the shirt is literally barely on her body. I guess that's what I get for telling her to dress herself though.

"Your cookie is in the dining room on the coffee table, Ly." I unwrap the popcorn and stick it in the microwave. "Why'd you put daddy's shirt on? Why didn't you get your own shirt?" She shrugs her shoulders so I walk over to her and pick her up. I would say that my shirt is like a dress on her but that is an understatement. It's more like she wrapped herself in a blanket. "You wanna go in the tent?" I walk her to the coffee table so she can eat the rest of her soggy cookie. I wipe her face off with the shirt I'm wearing and lift the side of the tent up. "I'm gonna go get the popcorn. You pick a good seat, okay?"

"Kay." She climbs into the tent and sits down in the middle of the blankets. It's big enough for her but I think it might be too small for her. I promised her that I'd sleep in it with her though so I'll have to find a way to make it work. She starts eating the cookie again and once I'm sure she's okay, I go back to the kitchen. I like to think that Jenna would be proud of me for making the tent and having movie night again. It is a little late and the tent doesn't look exactly like Jenna's tents used to look, but I tried. I take the popcorn out of the microwave and dump it in a plastic bowl. After letting her binge on Mountain Dew for two months solid, I don't let Lyla drink much soda anymore but tonight's a special occasion so I grab two cans of Sierra Mist from the fridge anyway. I turn off the kitchen light, grab the popcorn and the cans of soda and walk back to the living room. I put the food on the floor and take off my t-shirt so that I'm in nothing but my black wife beater tank top. I take off my jeans too and kneel down. I hold open the side of the tent and crawl inside with her. I sit next to her and pull the soda and the popcorn in the tent with us. I place it in the middle and turn the movie on. "I get pahcorn, daddy..." She holds her hands out for it and I pass her a couple pieces.

She shoves all the popcorn in her mouth and crawls over next to me. She situates herself so close to me that our bodies are touching. She rests her head on my chest and curls up next to me. I look down at her and find that she's super comfortable. Her head is on my stomach, she's laying on her side and chewing on popcorn as she pays close attention to the movie playing on the TV. I crack a toothless grin looking down at her and I put the popcorn in my lap to make it easier for her to reach. Sitting here in this tent is pretty uncomfortable for me since I'm laying at an angle that won't make the tent fall over my height but the fact that she's cuddled up with me and munching on popcorn makes this all worth it. My dad told me not to worry about it but I can't stop thinking about my mom's accusations. I really hope she doesn't do anything drastic that'll make me lose Lyla because honestly, if I lose her, I might as well just stop living myself. I already lost Jenna and Lyla's the only reason I wake up in the mornings and keep going. If I lost her then I'd literally have nothing else to live for.

I reach down and gently pull her hair out of the ponytail I put it in earlier. She drapes her arm across my body and watches the movie like that. I bend down and kiss the top of her head for a moment. I wouldn't give up this moment for all the money in the world.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I kneel down on the floor in front of my closet and rummage through the bottom shelf for a pair of clean underwear. I'm beyond exhausted from work today but luckily for me, I'm off for the next two days. I don't mind waitressing much, I just wish I didn't have to be on my feet all the time. My hips are killing me. I find a pair of black lace panties and slowly stand up. On the plus side, I made enough money tonight to get the air mattress I saw and buy myself a cheap dresser to store my socks, underwear and pajamas. I made $132 in tips tonight, working in just one section. I saw Luke put about $300 in his pocket tonight and he was working three sections. That's gonna be me eventually. I'm gonna be making $300 a night. I can't wait for those days. I bet those days I won't come home complaining about my hips hurting...I'll be too busy counting my money to worry about my hips hurting. I step into my underwear and pull them up. I pop a loose t-shirt over my head as well and turn off my bedroom light. I turn on the lamp I keep next to the covers I use as my bed and pull back the light sheet. I climb into my bed and cover myself.

I ate at work today so I don't have to worry about feeding myself. All I really want to do is go to sleep. I forgot to buy myself more Aspirin so I have to lie here in pain until I fall asleep and I'm not looking forward to that. Even if I was hungry, I'm hurting too bad to eat. I wish I had somewhere nice and soft to lie down at night so the bones in my hips could be against a cushion but I don't and I know that when I wake up tomorrow morning, the pain is going to be so much worse. I could cry, I'm hurting so bad. Instead of crying, I roll over on my side, grit my teeth to bear with the pain and snag my phone up. I turn off my lamp and roll back over. I roll onto my stomach because sometimes laying on my stomach takes some of the pressure off my hips and it helps. I push the home button on my very outdated iPhone 4. I have three missed calls, all from my mother. She must've called me while I was taking a shower. It's 11:30 at night in New Jersey. I wonder what the hell she's doing up this late. My mom is usually out cold by 10:00. I call her back and hold the phone to my ear.

"Josephine Wilson, you better have a damn good explanation for not returning my calls. I called you three times! Where the hell were you?! I was worried sick, I thought you were on the side of the road dead somewhere! What did I tell you about ignoring me?!" I roll my eyes as the first thing I hear is her bitching at me. No "hi, Jo", no "how are you?" Nope. Just straight bitching out of her mouth. She's such a mom sometimes. "Don't roll your eyes at me, either!" I fight off a laugh. It's a shame how well my mom knows me. "Where the hell were you?!"

"In the shower? Am I not allowed to bathe, your majesty?" I put the phone on speaker and put it down next to my pillow so I don't have to hold it to my ear.

"Don't get smart with me, Jo." She doesn't even sound like she's joking, which is kind of a big deal considering the fact that my mom and I usually have the same sense of humor and the pair of us are always joking around with each other. She sounds like she means business, which leads me to start thinking about all the things I could've done wrong. "You should've called as soon as you got out of the goddamned tub. I know you weren't showering for half an hour straight, you can't tell me that you were. You should've called me. Regardless of anything or how grown you are Jo, I'm still your mother. I was worried to death about you. You're in a new place, a new state and you know nothing about Florida. Now I don't call you very often but dammit Jo, the least you can do is answer your phone when I call you. It's damn near midnight and I-"

"Mom, chill. I'm sorry, okay? I just got off work at 11 and I went straight for the shower when I got home. I just now looked at my phone. I didn't mean to worry you, alright? I'm sorry." I sigh. She's really mad at me. My mom hasn't yelled at me like that since I was sixteen. I can actually remember the last time she swore at me, raised her voice and used 'Josephine' against me all in the same conversation. I was sixteen and I got an F on my math test. A straight F. And it wasn't because I didn't know what I was doing, it was because I let someone cheat off of my paper. I was a real rebel, right? Heh. I was such a boring child. I didn't go out and party like most kids my age. I stayed in the house and read books. It's not like I had no friends because I did, I had lots of friends back in New Jersey. I just wasn't much of a hardcore partier and I preferred to study, read and watch movies with my mom. I started partying in college though. In college, I finally discovered alcohol and I went out and got pissy drunk like every weekend. I swear I'm not an alcoholic or anything, I just don't know my limits when it comes to alcohol. I'll drink a little and I feel like I'm okay so then I'll drink a bunch more and next thing I know, I'm face down in a pile of my own vomit...or pinned underneath a car, whichever comes first. I realized that me not knowing my limits when it comes to drinking is a bit of a problem so I stopped drinking midway through my junior year of college. I only drank on occasion, like for my birthday and stuff. But I seriously have a problem with alcohol because I never know my limit. I always, always, always overdo it when I drink, no matter how hard I try to keep a handle on it. So I just don't drink at all anymore. "What were you calling for?"

"I'm calling to see if you're okay. I haven't heard from you in a few days. Did you get the money? Are you okay? How are you doing down there?" She sounds like she's crying, which makes me feel really guilty. But seriously, it's not my fault. Obviously if I had heard or seen my phone ringing, I wouldn't have blatantly ignored her. I have ignored her phone calls in the past, but I wouldn't ignore her when we're in two separate states where I don't know anyone and I already know she's freaking out. "Is everybody being nice to you?"

"I'm fine, mommy." I throw the "mommy" in there so she'll stop crying. Sometimes when I retreat back to acting like a little kid, it makes her feel better. I went to go visit her around Christmastime last year and when it was time for me to go back to Massachusetts, she started to cry. So I postponed my flight and I laid on the couch with my head in her lap and let her stroke my hair. That made her feel better long enough for her to let me go. "The money didn't come in the mail yet but it'll probably be here tomorrow. I'm doing okay. I finished my training for work and I worked my first shift tonight. I did good, I brought home over a hundred dollars in tips. And yeah, everyone is being really nice. My friends from work have been giving me rides to and from work. I was just getting ready to go to sleep for the night. My legs are hurting me."

"Your hips are bothering you, huh?" She asks and I mumble an "mhm" into the receiver. "Well sleeping on the floor probably isn't helping your case, Moe. You need to take a pill and sit in the bathtub." She sighs. "Look Jo, I'm coming down there. I'm gonna need you to give me your address and as soon as I finish with these teacher conferences and as soon as I get a free moment, I'm flying down there and I'm gonna sit with you for a weekend. When I come down there, I'm taking you to a doctor to see if they can do something about your hips. Someone's gotta be able to prescribe you something. You shouldn't be living every day in pain. It's bullshit, if you ask me." I _really_ don't want her to come down here but I know telling her not to is pointless. When my mom gets something in her mind, it's hard to convince her otherwise. "Listen to me, Jo...are you listening?" I mumble an "mhm" again. "I want you to get a good night's sleep tonight, you hear me babe? Get a good night's sleep and go into town tomorrow and get you something stronger than what you're taking. I know the over-the-counter stuff probably doesn't do much for you but get something heavier than the Aleeve you're taking. Alright?"

"Alright." I rest my chin on my pillow. "811 Pembroke Drive in Millerton, Florida. I'll text it to you, mommy." I cover my mouth and stifle a big yawn. I hadn't realized how tired I am until I laid down. "I'll call you tomorrow, okay? Love you."

"I love you too, Moe. Goodnight." I hang up the phone and lie it down on the blanket next to me. If the money she sent me comes tomorrow, this will be the last night I have to sleep on a floor. Every night, before I go to sleep, I try to make it a point to assess how my day went. All in all, today was a good day. I made decent money at the restaurant today, I had fun at work, I didn't screw up too badly and I met new people. Granted, I made a fool of myself in front of the neighbor boy today but still, it's been a good day. Speaking of the neighbor boy...I guess he is kind of nice looking. I still don't get the hype surrounding him though. Kaylee, Luke, Lucille and Macy all freak completely out whenever he walks through the door and I still don't get that. He has a cute face and a nice body and pretty cool personality but that's pretty much it. I'm afraid maybe losing Mark permanently damaged me. Is it really that bad to the point where I can't even find a simple man attractive? I do still feel really attached to my husband and all, but he's dead...he's been dead for six, going on seven months. Shouldn't I be able to admit when another man is attractive? I don't know.

That little girl...Lyla...she's really cute. I bury my face in my pillow and close my eyes. She's adorable. I liked the way she was too sheepish to speak to me and take my name tag directly from my hand. I thought it was precious how she had her dad take the name tag off of me and hand it to her himself. I like her green eyes and her brown hair and the way her teeth are spaced apart due to sucking on a pacifier. She's so cute. I have a soft spot for little kids. All children too. I think maybe that's part of the reason I became a teacher. Initially, I wanted to be a first grade teacher. I wanted to teach kids that were still little and cute but old enough to know not to wipe boogers on me. Somewhere along the lines of taking Statistics in high school, I changed it to wanting to be a high school Statistics teacher. I always wanted to be a mom. I never really wanted to be pregnant or anything because I hear pregnancy is miserable but the thought of having a little baby always made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I wouldn't mind getting pregnant if the end result is me having a baby. I don't think my dream of being a mother is ever going to come true now and somewhat, I'm okay with that. But if I ever did have a baby, I think I'd want it to be like Lyla. Pretty eyes and pretty hair...sweet and shy but smart at the same time. Me and Mark's baby would've been beautiful. I imagine he or she would've had dark hair and dark eyes, beautiful curly hair like Mark's hair.

I take a deep breath feel myself falling deeper into sleep.

 **X X X**

It's supposed to be around 90 degrees today so I sift through my closet and find a pair of jean shorts to wear. Normally, I'd wear a pair of jeans or sweatpants around town to avoid everyone seeing the dirty secrets that my legs are home to, but if I wear long pants today, I might die of heat exhaustion. I presume I'll have to walk quite a bit today, being that I'm going to the store to see if I can find a dresser and buy that air mattress since my mom's money was in the mail this morning. I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to transport an air mattress and a dresser back to my house yet but I will. I think I might call Luke. He drives a flatbed red truck and he could help me out. He said to call him if I need anything and although maybe he probably said that just to be nice, I'm going to take him literally. I'll call him if and when I find a dresser and a mattress. I button my shorts and zip them up. Maybe I should call him now and ask him. I wouldn't want to catch him off guard, especially if it's his off day. I pick my phone up and dial Luke's number. I brace the phone to my ear with my shoulder and scramble around my room to find a shirt to throw on. I fixed myself a sausage and egg sandwich for breakfast this morning and it's speaking to me. I either have to use the bathroom or puke...or maybe I just need to sit down. It didn't do me real good. I mean, it tasted good when it was going down my throat but now that I'm digesting it, my stomach hurts.

Luke answers on the third ring. "Hey sexy, what's cooking good looking?" He greets me and immediately, I laugh. I think what makes Luke funny is the fact that he never tries to be. He doesn't try to be funny, he doesn't say things to make himself seem cool. He's just naturally funny and his personality is just funny. He's a funny guy.

"Nothing, I was just wondering if you're doing anything today." I go into my bathroom with the phone still against my ear. I pick up a brush and start dragging it through my hair. "In like...two hours or something, at least."

"I'm just sitting here with Mike right now but I don't think we plan on doing anything today...why, what's up?" Mike is his boyfriend. I met him when he came into the restaurant yesterday. He came into the restaurant, handed Luke their house key, gave him a kiss and left. I thought that was cute. "It's my girl Jo...the one I work with." He says to someone in the background.

"Can you do me a big, big favor, Lukey? Like...the biggest favor and I'll love you forever if you do it for me." I finish brushing my hair and grab my toothbrush. "It's a real big favor."

"What do you need, babycakes?"

"I'm catching the 1:00 bus into town...to see if I can find a dresser and an air mattress. If I do find them...I'm gonna need a truck to bring them home. I can't lug a bunch of furniture home on a bus, you know? So can you help me?" I spread some toothpaste on my toothbrush and wait to put it in my mouth. "I totally understand if you can't. There's no pressure for you to help me. I just thought I should ask..."

"Of course. Mike and I were going to head into town around 2:00 for lunch anyway. We could just swing past the store and grab you. Can you be done with whatever you have to do by then? We'll be outside Walmart by two."

"Yeah, I'll be done by then. Thank you so much, Luke. You're a lifesaver. I owe you one." I put my toothbrush in my mouth and start brushing my teeth.

"No problem Jo. See you around 2." We hang up the phone and I put mine down on the sink. Thank god I have good friends around here because I don't know what I would do if I didn't have a truck to carry my mattress and my dresser home in. I finish brushing my teeth, rinse my mouth out and put my toothbrush back in the holder. I look at myself in the mirror, fix the part in my hair and turn off the light. It's almost 12:30 so I'd better start walking now if I want to make it to the bus stop at the end of the block by 1:00. The bus either comes early or it comes late, it never comes on time. I try to make it a point to be at the stop ten minutes early so I don't miss the bus, whether it's early or late. I slip on my flip flop sandals, tuck my phone away into my back pocket and head for the front door.

At least I don't have to sleep on the floor tonight.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I grab a juice box out of the open package at the bottom of the fridge and close it. Surprisingly, me and Lyla slept really well in the tent last night. Lyla didn't make it through the whole movie. She was asleep about half an hour into it and she fell asleep on my chest. I turned the movie off after she fell asleep and covered both of us up. We slept until 11:30, which is weird because Lyla never sleeps past 10 unless she's sick. I woke up before her and made her toaster waffles for breakfast. She wasn't far behind me. She ate her waffles and helped me clean up the tent. I told her we'd put the tent up again sometime and she said she would like that. I left her on the couch in front of the TV with a package of cheddar Goldfish while I went upstairs to take a shower. "Hey Ly." I shove the straw into her juice box and hand it to her. "You wanna come outside with daddy or do you want to stay in here and watch TV?" She sticks a handful of fish in her mouth and chomps on them. I'll take that as she wants to stay in here. "I'm just going outside to get the paper, I'll be back." I turn to head for the front door and shortly after I turn away, she starts whining.

"Daddy..." She sits up and looks my way. "Dada." She holds her arms out to me. "Dada, I go...I go...don't leave." I go back over to her and pick her up. She's still wearing my t-shirt and she has butter stains from the popcorn all over the front of it. I have to run to the store in a little while to grab something for dinner tonight so I'll bathe her whenever we're about to leave. She puts her head on my shoulder and holds her juice box. "Dada, I...ehhmet...inna...ehhme." I have no idea what she just said so I just nod. I open up the front door and carry her out onto the porch. "Dow...dow, dada...dow." She's asking me to put her down, so I let her out of my arms. She toddles around the porch and I run down to the yard so I can grab the paper that the paperboy threw in here. I pick up the paper and take it back to the porch. Lyla squats down on the porch and pokes at an ant with the straw of her juice box for a second. I start to tell her to stop but she puts the straw down and starts playing with the goldfish. "Swim! Swim!" She clanks the two crackers together. "Raaaaah!" I laugh at how she's making the fish growl.

I sit down on the swing and open up the paper, listening to Lyla while I start to read. I think she's making the fish have a fight because all I hear is her growling and smacking the crackers together. She babbles something to herself, throws one of the fish off the side of the porch and grabs another from her bag of them. As long as she's having fun, I guess I don't care what she does. I start swinging in the chair, settling in to read the cover story when I hear that tapping noise again. The same tapping noise I heard the last time I was sitting out on my porch. Lyla stops playing with the fish which lets me know she hears it too. Sure enough, she walks right past my house with her nose buried in a black cell phone. She's wearing a pair of shorts and an orange t-shirt and black flip flops that are making the tapping noise. I think it's funny how I can hear her coming before I even see her. She looks like she's mouthing something as her thumbs are moving on her phone's screen. I assume she's catching the bus, just like she was the first time I saw her walking in front of my house. She looks different than last night. Maybe because she's wearing shorts and an orange shirt, as opposed to the jeans and dark green shirt she wears as a uniform.

"Daddy! Daddy!" Lyla picks herself up off the porch and jumps up and down, pointing at Jo as she walks by. I think she recognizes her but can't quite put her finger on who it is. "Daddy...lobber!" She toddles over to me and taps me on my leg. "Lobber, daddy!" She's saying _lobster._ She recognizes her strictly because she gave her the name tag yesterday and the name tag was a lobster.

I think Jo heard her screaming my name because she pauses for a second, pretends to look really busy texting someone and starts walking again. "Tell her hi, Ly. Say hi, Jo." I make sure I say her name loud enough to stop her. She stops walking again and turns around like she's trying to see who said her name. She might not be able to see us because there's a big mulberry bush that blocks the chair on my porch. "Hi Jo."

"Hi doe!" Lyla waves at her.

"Hi." She shoves her phone in her pocket and smiles. She looks really nice. I'm finally getting a good look at her in good lighting and she looks super young. She has a rounded, chubby, babyish face. Her lips are very full and they're shaped like a heart. Her nose sticks out a little bit and turns up but it suits her face since her cheeks are plump and full. Her eyebrows are thick and they're perfectly shaped and her eyelashes are long, even from a distance. Her eyes are clearly brown but in the right light, they could be dark green, hazel maybe. When she smiles, her bottom teeth are crowded and a little crooked but her top teeth are perfectly aligned. "Good morning...or afternoon, rather." She giggles.

Lyla climbs down off the porch and excitedly runs over to the gate next to where Jo's standing. "Hi..." She keeps waving at her and looking up at her. The amazement is clear in the look and the gaze that Lyla is giving her. It's like she can't believe it's her. "Hi... Hi doe."

"Hi Lyla." Jo looks down at her and waves back. "You remember me from last night, huh?" In typical Lyla fashion, she backs away from her and looks down at the ground. "The crayon...it came off my name tag." She loops her thumbs through the belt loops on her pants and smiles at me instead of Lyla.

"I would've paid for a new one if it didn't." I put the newspaper down on the swing and stand up. "Sorry about that, still. I didn't even realize she was coloring all over it. I thought she was drawing on the paper. You know kids though..." I pick Lyla up and fix her, since she's strutting around outside wearing my shirt and nothing else. I pull the shirt up so her chest isn't hanging all out. "I'm glad it came off though."

"It's fine." She nods and waves her hand at me. "I could've gotten a new one for free." She tilts her head and looks at Lyla again. "You gave my name tag a makeover, didn't you? It looked better with the crayon on it." Her lips turn up into a toothless smile. "She's really cute...how old is she?"

"She's three, going on thirty." I nudge Lyla and Jo giggles. "Tell her thank you, Ly. She called you cute, tell her thank you."

"Thank you." Lyla looks at Jo but holds on to me really tight.

"You're welcome sweetheart." Jo reaches across the gate and touches Lyla's arm. Lyla lets her but she lets me know that I better not let her go by squeezing me. "I should go...I have a bus to catch. It was nice talking to you though, Alex." She takes her phone out of her pocket again. "Bye, Lyla." She waves at Lyla. Lyla lets me go and waves back. Jo looks down at her phone and as soon as she pulls it out of her pocket, Lyla's eyes go to her phone. On Jo's phone, she has a sparkly brown and yellow giraffe figurine hanging out of the headphone socket. She's really interested in that. "...Do you like that?" Jo motions towards the giraffe. Lyla nods her head slowly. Jo twists the figurine and holds it out. "You can have it." Lyla reaches out and takes it. "She can keep it. I have plenty more where that came from." She looks at me. "Bye guys." She waves again.

"We'll see you around, Jo." I wave back at her. She walks off in the direction of the bus stop and I turn around to go back to the porch. "Let me see, Ly...what'd you get?" I put her down and kneel in front of her and hold my hand out. "Let me see..."

"Dada, looky...my new fwend Doe gibbit to me." She hands me the little giraffe.

"Your new friend Jo, huh?" I look at it. "That was nice of her, wasn't it?" Lyla nods. "You're gonna have to tell her thank you somehow, right?"

"Wight."


	12. How Sweet

The last time I checked the clock was about five minutes ago and when I checked it then, it was only 4:30 in the afternoon. It's 4:30 in the afternoon and I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to keep up with the orders being shouted and thrown at me. Usually, I'm pretty good with juggling a bunch of orders at once because I'm freakishly good at multitasking but today for some reason, I'm having a hard time. I think it's because I've never had to bartend when the bar is as full as it is right now. There are thirty-something chairs at the bar and every single one of them is filled. The other tender is on her break so I'm all alone and it's up to me to get 30 drunk men their beers and vodka. I try not to pass judgment on people I don't already know, but I'm finding it hard not to be judgmental when it's only 4:30 in the afternoon and the bar is currently filled. I thought 5:00 was happy hour but when you're dealing with a bunch of drunks, I guess it's never too early to start happy hour. I clocked in for my shift at 12:00 this morning and even at 12:00 noon, it was already packed in here. Around 2:00, the bar started filling up and it's been overwhelming ever since. I've only been working here for a week and five days...I'm not equipped to deal with a full bar by myself.

Bethany, the girl I'm bartending with today, explained to me that today is the start of baseball season and around the sports seasons, the bar is packed at every time of the day. I guess I'm not complaining, considering the fact that I already have about 200 bucks in my pocket and my shift isn't over for another two and a half hours, but it makes me wonder just how these drunks are going to get home when it's not even past 5:00 yet and they're already too drunk to sit upright. Maybe I should stop worrying about it though. I don't know, I just find that ever since everything happened, I'm pretty sensitive to other peoples' drinking habits anymore. I know it's not my business but it kind of irks me when I think about how the other people _aren't_ thinking when they're shoving beer after beer after beer down their throats. I hurry back to the liquor cabinet and pour a glass of coconut flavored rum for the biker guy that's sitting towards the end of the bar. I mix it with a little bit of orange juice from the machine just like he likes it and take it over to him. "Here you are, sir...sorry for the wait." I put down a coaster and sit his glass on top of it. "Anything else I could get for you right now?" I lean against the counter and smile at him.

The man stirs his drink with a plastic coffee stirrer and smiles back at me. "I'm all set right now, babe." He takes a sip of his drink and licks his lips.

"Okay well give me a shout if you need anything." I nod at him and go back to the beer fridge. When I first clocked in for my shift and found out that I was going to be bartending with Bethany for the day, I wasn't all that excited. I had only worked with Bethany twice in the entire week and five days I've been here and we didn't really associate much before today. But she gave me a few tips for bartending and I think we could be considered friends now. First of all, she stood in front of me and unbuttoned the ugly green polo shirt we have to wear as our uniform. I usually wear my shirt buttoned up to my collar but Bethany unbuttoned all the buttons and made it so I'm actually showing a little bit of cleavage. And she lifted my shirt up a little bit so I'm "giving a little hip action". Secondly, she taught me that if I flirt with the guys a little bit, they'll tip me better and if I get them drunk enough, I can charge them whatever I want for drinks. Legally, I'm only allowed to keep whatever the drink costs on the regular menu so if I charge them any overages, I can technically keep the payout. I haven't charged anyone extra for their drinks though. I decided that I'll only charge the dickheads extra and the nice guys, I'll charge them regular price. I haven't really felt the need to charge anyone extra though because for one, every guy I've tended to today has been really nice to me and for two, they've been tipping me freakishly well with just a little flirtatious smile and a wink here or there.

I've overheard a few men today talk to their buddies about how I'm "sexy" and "hot" and I thought that it would bother me more than it does. I'm relatively unbothered by it though. I don't mind them staring at my chest and my butt when I walk away because after they leave, I'll find a $20 tip underneath their shot glass or empty beer can and that makes all the staring worth it. As long as none of them touch me, I don't care that they look. The other thing that Bethany taught me is to put my name tag on the bottom of my shirt so they don't know my name. According to our employee contract, our customers have legal right to know our names so we HAVE to wear our name tags but nowhere in the contract does it say that we have to wear them in a visible location to Bethany says if I'm going to flaunt my body and flirt for extra tips, they don't need to know my name because "that's how you get raped." I don't know if this makes me trashy, but I don't care. I'll flirt with drunk men all day long if it means that I get 20 bucks per customer. I'm trying to save up to buy myself a couch so I need all the tips I can rack up.

I open the beer fridge and grab two Cult 45s. I kick the fridge shut with my foot and run the beers down to the other end of the bar. "Here you are. That'll be $14.00, sir." Like a good little bartender, I crack open one can for him and pour it over his glass of ice. "Is there anything else you need?" I grab a straw from the pocket of my apron and put it next to his glass of beer. He shakes his head and fishes through his wallet. He hands me a $20 bill. "I'll be right back with your change."

"You keep the change, hon." He waves his hand at me.

"Thank you so much." I wad the twenty dollars up and stick it in my apron pocket, making a mental note to remember that only six of it is mine. "If you need anything else, you just give me a holler." I walk towards the register so I can break this twenty and get my six dollars before I forget to do it and end up walking out of here with twenty bucks that doesn't belong to me. I punch my employee code into the register and cash out the twenty. I keep fourteen of it in the register and put six of it in my pocket. I'll count my tips while I'm on my break but I'm pretty sure that I have at least enough to put a down payment on a couch, if not enough to buy the whole thing. I went back and forth, debating whether or not I should get a TV first or a couch first and needless to say, the couch won. I don't make enough money just yet to afford a cable plan so getting a TV would be pretty pointless I guess. There are still so many things I need in my house. Last weekend, I crossed a bed and a dresser off my list. I have a nice little air mattress in my bedroom now and a cheap but decent dresser. I set up the two end tables I bought at the dollar store and I had enough left over from the money my mom sent me to buy curtains and a bedroom set. I had to settle for a cheap one, so I have a purple and silver flowery quilt on my bed with purple pillowcases and I stuck purple curtains up in my room and I think it looks nice. I still need a couch, a TV, cable, internet, a kitchen table, chairs, a coffee table, rugs, blinds for all my windows, curtains for my bathroom and a toilet seat cover. Plus, I'd really like to decorate my house. I think this weekend I'm going to paint my kitchen. It looks so dreary and dead in my house. It needs some color.

I hear the gate open so I turn my head only to find that Bethany's back from her break. I close the register and go over to the soda fountain. I don't get why everyone seems to like bartending more than waitressing. I find bartending to be extremely annoying with the way you're forced to deal with drunks all damn day. I'd rather waitress any day. In truth, bartending does bring in way more money than waitressing but still and yet, I'd rather waitress than bartend. I push the ice button and fill kiddie cup up with ice for myself. I push the Coke button and fill my cup up with coke. The good thing about bartending is that we don't have to pay for drinks when we're bartending. Regular drinks though, not alcoholic drinks. We're not allowed to drink on the job and even if we were, we'd have to pay for alcoholic drinks. We can get free kid's drinks though, as long as we're bartending. When we're waitressing, we're allowed free side dishes but not free meals. I usually just steal a crouton or two from the salad bar when I'm waitressing. I can't eat the food here. It's not that it's nasty because it's actually pretty good but I'm just not into eating things that come from the ocean that's literally in my backyard. I'll get a a chicken sandwich on my break sometimes but I try not to eat too much of this stuff. I think me not being able to eat the food that we cook here is just me being a product of my environment. I didn't have my first McDonald's french fry until I was ten years old, thanks to my health-freak of a mother. I think the whole "no-takeout" rule is just branded in me somewhere.

"Jo, you can go on break." Tony peeks out from the break room just to tell me that I can. He's been back there all day doing inventory with the fishing company that supplies the food for us. Everyone says that Tony is some big asshole but every time I've come into contact with him, he seemed really nice. I think he's just old and finicky and sometimes evil. He's gotta be in his 70s or something like that and sometimes he can be mean but he's nice to me and I don't think he's an asshole. He shuts the break room door when he goes back inside. I untie my apron and stick it underneath the bar counter for safekeeping. I trot back to the break room and sidestep a bunch of boxes and order forms. I clock out for my break and look around. I usually spend my breaks in the break room but that doesn't seem like a good idea today, for multiple reasons. Maybe I'll just go sit outside. I sidestep the boxes and order forms again and walk back out of the break room. It's a Sunday so we're somewhat short staff today but usually when I take my break, I'm sitting back in the break room with other people that I actually talk to, like Luke, Macy, Lucille or Kaylee. Today, it's just me and Bethany in the bar and Chloe and Austin on the floor. I leave out from behind the bar counter and head for the door. A couple of the guys at the bar stare at me when I walk by them so I just politely smile and see myself out of the front entrance.

I walk over towards the benches that are outside of the restaurant and sit down. Well most importantly, my hips haven't been bothering me as much as they were when I was sleeping on the floor. My air mattress is surprisingly very, very comfortable. I think it might actually be better on my hips than a regular mattress since there are no springs. It's literally like I'm sleeping on air and it's so comfy. I actually took my mom's advice too, and I bought something stronger than Aspirin. I got some Excedrin Back and Body pills and they've been working miracles. I'll feel my hips start to ache, pop one of those pills and it takes the ache away within minutes and it keeps it away. I reach in my back pocket and take my phone out to see if anyone called or texted me. I haven't talked to any of my friends in days. I haven't worked with Kaylee in two days, I haven't worked with Macy at all this week and Lucille is still on vacation. Me and Luke were texting last night but I haven't seen him since he drove me home with my mattress and my dresser. Oh, and I haven't seen Alex and Lyla since that day I gave Lyla my giraffe charm. I've been kind of on my own lately. It doesn't really bother me much though.

I look around as I sit on the bench. I've been in Florida for a week and two days and I still have yet to truly explore. I guess that's what I get for not having a car but I haven't even been to the beach yet and the beach is literally in my backyard. I think I'm gonna try and take a trip to the beach soon, just to say I did. There's no way I can live in a city that's less than a mile off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and not go to the beach. I've been doing a lot of walking around town and I've been seeing these flyers about this big Independence Day celebration they're going to have down at the boardwalk on the beach and since the restaurant is closed on Independence Day, I think I might go to that. I'll ask Lucille or something if she wants to go because I don't want to go alone. I'll wait until it's closer to the Fourth of July to ask though. It's only the beginning of June. I think it'll be good for me to go to that Independence Day thing though. What better way to meet the people of Millerton than to go to a city function?

Maybe it's too soon to say but even though I've only been in Florida for a week and some change, it's already so much better than Chamberlain. Things are really starting to look up for me. The only complaint I have is that I still don't have as many friends as I thought I would have at this point in time but then again, it's only been a week and I still have time to make friends. Sure, I have friends in the people I work with but they're not the kind of friends that I hang out with. The only one I've ever seen outside of work was Luke and that's only because he has a truck and I needed a truck. Everyone just has their own life and I have no life outside of work. Luke has his boyfriend, Lucille is married and just went on vacation with her husband, Kaylee has a fiance and Macy has a boyfriend too. I kind of feel like the odd one out because not only do I not have a boyfriend or anything like that, I also don't want one.

Call me crazy, but I kind of like this. I like how here in Millerton, my only worry is about how I don't want a boyfriend. I don't have to walk around worried about if my house is going to be vandalized and I don't have to walk around worried if people are going to attack me, verbally or physically. I'm sitting here on a bench in front of my job, worried about how I don't have and don't want a boyfriend when everyone else around me does. I never thought I'd see this day. The craziest part about being here is that there are days that go by where I don't even think about Chamberlain and that's the way I like it. I've been in contact with Mrs. Robinson of course, but even when I talk to her, she doesn't mention it. We talk, she asks me how I'm doing, I ask her how she's doing nad that's usually the end of it. I have to remind myself to thank her for this someday because if she would've never told me to get the hell out of Chamberlain, I wouldn't have. I would still be miserable, hungry, probably homeless by now if I had stayed. For the last six...wait, seven months now, I've been stuck thinking about the dumbest decision I've ever made. If someone asks me what the stupidest thing I've ever done is, that's an easy question. But being here in Florida for only two weeks, away from everything with next to no cares in the world, I think I'll finally have an answer when someone asks me what the smartest thing I've ever done is.

I look down at my cell phone to check the time. My break is almost over, so I'd better head back inside now.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Okay, sweet girl...time for the hard part." I hold her little arm still and wrap my thumb and index finger around her IV. The little redhead looks at me with dark green eyes and touches the little stuffed bear I have hanging out of my pocket. I can't wait until her parents get a load of the fact that I'm discharging her today but not her sister. They'll be sure to cause an uproar...or they'll cry, whichever comes first. There's no reason for Molly Marshall to stay here though. Her incisions are healed, she's been having regular bowel movements, she's been taking solids and her temperature has been stable for several days now. There's no medical reason for me to keep her so I have to let her go. Her sister on the other hand isn't doing so hot. They used to be conjoined at the hip but they had two of everything. They had their own arms, legs, kidneys, hearts...everything. But they shared the same lymph nodes and Megan got the smaller of the lymph nodes when we separated them and her lymph node is failing, which means she can't fight off infections as well as her sister can and she has an infection in her kidney right now. So Molly can go home but Megan has to stay for a little while longer. "There we go. That didn't hurt too bad, did it?" I put a pink Band-Aid over the place where her IV was. "No, that didn't hurt." I clean up the IV. "Time to go check on your sissy."

I walk over to the other crib. Poor Megan is laying in her crib with tubes up her nose and down her throat. Her temperature is down from where it was earlier though and she actually excreted some urine, so she's doing better but still not 100%. I check her urine output in the bag that hangs down from her catheter. Yeah, she peed a little bit more than she did when I last checked her urine output...and her pee is perfectly clear like it should be. It's not cloudy, bloody or too dark. "How are you feeling, Megs?" I stroke her pretty red hair back. "I'll tell your mom and dad to feed you something good for dinner tonight." Since she's finally peeing, her parents can try to give her some baby food in about an hour. If she can keep that down, we might be looking at sending her home at the end of this week, if not this week then next week for sure. The door to their room opens up and I don't even budge because I know it's their parents. I hook another bag of antibiotics into Megan's IV and adjust her nasal tube. "Good news Mr. and Mrs. Marshall." I mumble, concentrating on making sure Megan's nasal tube is doing what it's supposed to be doing. Once I'm sure that it's working properly, I stop messing with the poor kid and look at her parents. "I'm gonna go ahead and discharge Molly today. She's doing very well, her incision is good, she's taking solids, her temperature is good... she can go home."

Mrs. Marshall squeezes her husband's hand and gasps. Mr. Marshall is the first to notice that I said Molly...not Molly AND Megan. "And Megan? She can come too, right?" He questions me.

"I'm afraid not." I take off my gloves and walk over to the sink where I put the twins' charts. "Megan's kidney infection is getting better but it's still not where I want it to be. She's urinating though...and her temperature is consistently dropping, which is excellent. You guys can try to give her some baby food before you take Molly home. If she keeps the food down, I think we're looking at a discharge next week for her...maybe by the end of this week." I flip to Molly's discharge papers and begin to sign them.

"...She's gonna be okay though, right?" Mrs. Marshall rushes over to Megan's bedside and holds her hand. "She's gonna live?"

"Yeah, she's gonna be fine. She just can't go home with her sister just yet. But I foresee a speedy recovery. She's going to be perfect." I sign all of Molly's papers and close the chart. "She's tough."

"She is." Mr. Marshall agrees with me.

"I'll be right back with Molly's paperwork... until I get back, you should try waking her up...try feeding her if she'll take it. She should be hungry." I pick both charts up and shove them under my shoulder. "I'll be back in a while." I close the door behind myself and take both the charts over to the nurses' station. As I've said before, there are certain days that I love my job. Today is one of the days that I hate it, but not for the reasons one would think. I just keep thinking about how I'm at work spending time with other peoples' kids and my own is sitting in a car shop with my dad today. Today just isn't a good day for me.

"Hey Alex..." As I'm standing at the nurses' station in PICU, I hear Arizona call my name. Even though I'm really not in the mood to deal with her—or anything today, for that matter—I close the chart I was looking at and turn towards her. "I have a bowel resection on a ten year old in an hour...you want in?" She touches my shoulder and smiles in her usual, bright and happy kind of way. I reopen the chart since all she wanted is to know if I want in on her surgery or not. Surgery sounds cool but I have seven kids to discharge, I don't think I have time to scrub in with her. She takes her hand off my shoulder. "Or are you trying to get out of here earlier today? Because I was thinking that maybe you could take down the adhesions for me. You haven't really been doing much surgery lately...you okay?" I nod and pretend to be busy signing off on the chart I'm looking at. I'm really not in the mood today. My mind is spinning off in a thousand different directions and I can't even concentrate long enough to sign off on charts, let alone scrub in on a damn surgery with her. I just don't have this in me to do today. "Alex?"

"Will you quit bugging me? I have seven discharges to do today, nine intakes and no interns to help me. Sorry, but I can't go run off and play with you whenever you feel like it's time to play." I accidentally snap at her and I feel bad after I do it but I can't take it back now so oh well, I guess. I look at her through the corner of my eye and unlike all the other times I talk to Arizona, I can't read her face this time. I can usually tell how she's feeling just by the look on her face but I can't tell how she's feeling right now. "Sorry." I mutter and finish signing off on the chart and sigh. My mind is everywhere right now, starting with the fact that my dad had to work today and he's watching my kid. Something about the thought of Lyla being in an old, nasty, sweaty car shop around a bunch of machinery doesn't set right with me. Plus, around my lunch hour, my dad texted me and told me that he called my mom to see if she would be willing to just come down to the shop and sit with Lyla while he fixes a cracked radiator and apparently, she didn't answer. I don't know what scares me more; the fact that my dad went against my wishes and contacted my mother in regards to my daughter or the fact that my mother didn't answer. She's usually all over things when it comes to Lyla and the fact that she didn't answer either means that she completely washed her hands to me or she's got something else under her sleeve to where she doesn't have to talk to us about Lyla. I'd like to think that she decided to permanently step off when it comes to Lyla but I know my mom and I know that the second scenario is about fifty times more likely than the first.

"Something you wanna share with the class here, Alex?" She puts her hand on my arm. "...If something's bothering you...I'll listen. Otherwise...maybe you should just head home early. Instead of lashing out at the wrong person, you know. Next person you lash out on could be your boss...or something like that." She gives me a half-smile, offering a sign of truce. She has a point there. I did lash out at my boss. "You can head home early if you want..."

"I'm really sorry, Zone." I turn to my side so I can look her in the eye. She's one of my good friends so sometimes it's easy for me to treat her like a friend but I have to try to remember that she's my boss, first and foremost. "My head's just not in it today. But I'll be fine. I'm just gonna go do my discharges. Sorry I can't scrub in with you."

"Why don't you head home after your discharges? I'll get an intern to do your intakes." She picks up the chart I just signed off on. "Is it the same situation that's bothering you?" I shrug my shoulders. I broke down sometime last week and asked her about the process that happens when someone tries to take kids away from their parents. Being a pretty established pediatrician herself, Arizona's seen her fair share of CPS cases. There have actually been instances where she's been the one to call CPS if a kid comes in the ER with a broken arm and the parents can't explain it. She knows how that stuff works so I asked her about it last week and she assured me that my mom can't just go and petition for custody if she doesn't have a reason with evidence behind it. So she knows what's been going on. "I know how scary it is for you, Al. And I'm sorry you have to deal with it. But just in case something does happen, maybe you should spend all your time with her." She looks through the chart I signed. "Who um...who has her now?"

"My dad does, but he has her down at his car shop and I'm not really comfortable with that. She's only three, you know? She could see something that interests her and with all that machinery, she could end up hurting herself. I'm not comfortable with her being down there but I don't really have another choice. I'm scared that if I leave her with my mom, I might not get her back. So what other choice do I have?" I put my hands in my pockets. "It's just fucke— _messed_ up how I'm just trying to make this crappy situation better and my mom just keeps making it crappier than it already is." I change my choice of words, mindful that Arizona doesn't like the "F" word. She has a pretty colorful vocabulary of her own but for as long as I've been working under her, I have yet to hear her drop an "F" bomb. "I know I'm not all that good at being a dad just yet but I'm trying. I...I feed her every day, I play with her, I bathe her, she always has clean clothes...Yeah, she's in diapers, she sucks on a pacifier and she sleeps with me but she's three. I don't really think it's all that bad. And I know the bruises looked bad but she's a kid. She plays rough. I wouldn't hurt her. It just sucks how everyone else believes me and my mom doesn't."

"I wish you'd stop saying how you're not a good dad. Alex, I'm a pediatrician. I work with all kinds of kids. I work with kids that have rich parents, poor parents...good parents, bad parents. Do you know how many bad parents I see on a daily basis? You're not one of them. You're a good dad." She pats my shoulder again. "It sounds to me like the only thing you need is a good, reliable babysitter for when your dad can't watch your little girl. And you _do_ know that there's a perfectly good daycare downstairs, right? A daycare that I highly recommend. A daycare that my own daughter stays in. I could run downstairs and get you the enrollment forms if you want."

"You don't think I thought about that? I think about sticking her in the daycare every day. But you've seen Lyla yourself...she won't even speak to anyone she doesn't know. I can see it now. I stick her down in that daycare and I get calls while I'm in surgery about how she won't eat, won't participate with the other kids. It's best if I just keep her with people she knows. I have to work with her before I just stick her in place full of strangers. She's gonna have to be eased into it and even then, I don't know for sure if she'd be okay with it." I sigh. "But you're right about that. I do need a reliable babysitter for when my dad can't because the only other option is sticking her with my mom and if I do that, I might never see her again."

"Let me talk to Callie when I get home tonight. She has a list of babysitters we use for Sofia when she's sick and the daycare won't keep her. I'll see where she put the list and I'll bring it to you when you work on Tuesday. Okay?"

"Thank you, Arizona." I slouch my shoulders. I really don't want to, but it's looking like Lyla might have to go to daycare. I'm not nervous about how they're going to treat her down there because I know they treat the kids great down there. So many doctors send their kids down there and I hear great things about it. I'm just nervous because Lyla can't even function around people she doesn't know. She gets all clammy and I know that she'll freeze up and not even participate in anything that they do. If there's one thing I know about my daughter, it's that sending her to daycare is a bad idea. But at the same time, sending her to daycare could teach her how to interact with kids her own age. She could make friends and learn how to open up to people. I just don't know what I should do. "I'm gonna go start my discharges...I'll talk to you later." I pick up an electronic chart off the charging dock and walk away from the nurses' station.

 **X X X**

I sit on the edge of the tub and pinch the bridge of my nose, listening to the water collecting in base of it. Today was one of the roughest days at work I've had in a while. Initially, I didn't want to leave work early but when I sat and thought about it, it was probably for the best. I wasn't supposed to get off until 7:00 but Arizona let me leave at 5:30. Part of me wonders how long she's going to give me special treatment...letting me leave early, ignoring my lashing out...all that stuff. I wonder how long she's going to write it off as me going through a hard time. I take a deep breath, stop pinching my nose and reach across the tub to grab the container of pink bubble bath. I unscrew the cap off the container and pour a little bit of it into the water. The bubbles start to rise so I put the cap back on and put the container back. "...Lyla. Come here." I rub my eyes, yawn and wait for her to come in the bathroom. I hear the little pitter-patter of her feet coming. She toddles into the bathroom with me and stands in the doorway, holding my cell phone in her hands. She's already naked. "Come on, bath time." She puts my phone on the floor and walks over to me. I pick her up and put her inside the water. "So tell me about your day with Pappy..." In reality, I just want to give her a bath, feed her some dinner and put her to bed. I'm not in the mood for anything tonight. I'm just in the mood for bed.

"...I help Pappy work a car, Dada." She sits down in her bath water and looks up at me. "I eated hot dogs...I see gammy...gammy gimme ice cream." She sits with her legs straight out and splashes in the water. My dad already told me that my mom came by the shop anyway. He talked to her about what happened between me and her and she said she was just trying to "protect her granddaughter". He said that he told her that she was wrong, that I would never hurt Lyla, all that good stuff. I wish he wouldn't have called my mom at all. I wish he would've just let it go. He should've just kept an eye on Lyla himself and left her out of the equation. I know it's probably not possible, but I never wanted my mom to see Lyla again. I wanted to keep her away from her for as long as I possibly could and my dad just screwed that up. "Daddy...wuss wong?" She stands up on her feet and touches my cheek. "Daddy?"

"Daddy's tired, pumpkin butt." I kiss her on the cheek and rub her hair. I've just been thinking about losing her lately and I can't stand that. Why won't this all just go away? Everything with my mom...I just want it to go away. The fact that my mom feels like she has to protect her from me. Why does she feel like that? She doesn't have to protect my daughter from me. She's my daughter...my reason for breathing. The reason I didn't just lie down and give up after Jenna died. She doesn't have to protect Lyla from me. I squeeze her little naked body tight and press my lips against the side of her head. "I love you, Ly..."

"I lah you too, dada." She puts her hands on my cheeks and smashes them together, giving me a "fishy" face. She puckers her lips and kisses me on mine for a second.

"You don't kiss other boys on the lips like that, do you?" I dunk a washcloth in her bath water and later it up with soap. "You go around kissing boys on the lips?"

"Ewww, no." She giggles and shakes her head. "I only kiss my daddy on the lippies." She takes the washrag off of me and starts rubbing it across my face. "Daddy dirty..."

"No, Lyla's dirty." I take it back and start washing her arms and chest. "'What else did you do today, Ly?" I turn her around and wash her back. I scrub her entire body and make sure I get her neck real good. "Did you play while you were with Pappy?" She nods her head and holds onto my shoulder while I wash her butt. "What'd you play?"

"...I pay wiff...a monkey witch...and Lionel, Spawky and Champy." She starts giggling when I wash her feet.

"You played with a monkey wrench...Sparky, Lionel and Champy? I know Sparky and Lionel...who's Champy?" Sparky is her stuffed poodle, Lionel is her stuffed lion and I have no idea who Champy is.

"...My garaffe that my fwend doe gimme." She closes her eyes as I start washing her face.

"Oh, the giraffe that your friend Jo gave you? His name's Champy?" She nods. I wash behind her ears and get the back of her neck real good. I don't want to wash her hair tonight because her ear is still healing from that nasty infection. "Did you ever tell your friend Jo thank you?" To be totally honest, Jo is the only person I've ever heard Lyla refer to as her "friend". I don't have the heart to tell her that Jo is way too old to be her friend though. "You still have to thank her, honey..." It's been nearly two weeks since Jo gave her that giraffe figurine and although I know she probably forgot all about the fact that she gave Lyla the giraffe, I still want Lyla to thank her. I want to raise her right. "Next time you see her, you have to tell her thank you."

"...Dada, maybe I could...maybe I could give doe my pony? 'Cause her gimme a garaffe...her can have my pony dada." She sees me hang up her washcloth and lunge to unplug the drain so she steps out of the tub.

"Honey, I don't think Jo wants your pony. That's very nice though." I wrap a towel around her naked body and pick her up. "If you give Jo your pony, your other ponies would miss it and it would miss the other ponies too." I take her to my bedroom and put her on the bed. "Why don't you just tell her thank you? You don't have to give her your pony to say thank you, Ly." I start rubbing her dry.

"...We could give doe coopies? Like mummy use a do to Gibby mommy cookies..." She's referring to how Jenna used to bake cookies and bring them to Mrs. Jensen's house for their book club meetings. "We give doe coopies, daddy?"

"I don't know about that, Ly..."

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I poke at the sizzling ground beef with a spatula and try to see if all of it is brown. When I got home from work about...two hours ago, I wasn't hungry at all. I didn't want food, I just wanted to take a shower and lay in my nice comfy bed. So I took the shower and as soon as I got in, I found that I was starving. So as much as I wanted to just lie down and go to bed, I figured starving to death was as cruel way to let myself die so I got off my lazy butt and decided to make myself some tacos. Is it bad that I had to read the back of the taco box to make them? I'm a horrible cook but I think these tacos will be edible...just as long as I cook the ground meat the right way. The back of the taco box said to brown the ground meat...I'm not exactly sure what "browning" ground meat is but I'm trying to brown it nonetheless. I'm pretty smart...I have two Ivy League diplomas...browning ground meat is probably cooking the meat until it's brown, right? I dunno. I put the spatula down on the stove and walk back over to my fridge. I have a tomato, a head of lettuce, cheese and the taco sauce came in the taco kit.

If Mark could see me trying to cook, he'd probably make fun of me and tell me not to. I tried to cook us dinner once. It was when Kathy was out with the flu so she couldn't come cook for us. Mark and I were left to fend for ourselves and I grew up thinking that takeout was the devil, so when he tried to take me out to dinner, I politely asked him if I could cook dinner instead. I was going to bake chicken, make my own stuffing the way my mom always did for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, make some corn and homemade mashed potatoes. Mark posted up in the kitchen with me like me trying to cook was his own personal entertainment and he got a good laugh out of me trying to peel potatoes. He told me that he loved me but I shouldn't cook. He gave me a kiss on my cheek and ordered Chinese takeout, which I ate because I was hungry. I really tried to cook dinner though...and Mark said that I get a got an A for effort. If he saw me trying to figure out what exactly "browning ground meat" is, he'd laugh at me for sure.

I take the tomato, the lettuce and the cheese out of the fridge and put them all on the counter. I go back to the stove and poke at the ground meat a little bit more. I think it's all brown. I don't want to burn it so I guess I'll just trust my instincts. I pick up the packet of taco seasoning and open it. I sprinkle it all over the ground meat and spread it around with the spatula. I glance at the directions again. Okay, so I'm supposed to put the lid over the pan so it can simmer. Just as I'm reaching for the lid, I hear a knock at my door. I pause for a moment, thinking of everyone that it could be. It could be someone from work, but I doubt it. Everyone from work has their own lives to live and I can't imagine why they'd want to be bothered with me. I look at the clock on my stove. It's going on 8:00 at night, so it can't be the mailman or anything like that. I stick the lid on the pan and walk over to my door. Whoever it is, I sure hope they're not important or anything. Because I'm walking around my house braless, in a baggy white t-shirt and a pair of red plaid flannel jammie pants. I smooth my hair back with my hand and unlock the door. I turn the knob and slowly open it up. What is he doing here?

Alex is standing on my porch, sporting a pair of light gray Nike jogging pants and a black Led Zeppelin t-shirt. He's holding Lyla on his hip and she's wearing a bright pink pair of footie pajamas. I have no idea why the two of them are here. "Hi?" I greet the both of them and I think for a moment. I could invite the two of them in...that would probably be the neighborly thing to do but my house isn't really...nice. So I open the door a little wider and step out onto the porch with them, barefoot and all. This is the first time I've stood next to him before and I never realized how tall he is. He towers over me. Lyla looks all happy and giddy but Alex...he looks embarrassed? Or maybe he's just tired. I don't know which one. I haven't seen the two of them in...two weeks? It's been a while since I've seen the two of them and they're on my porch right now...and I'm in my pajamas. Dear god, I'm in my pajamas. I can't catch a break around this man.

"Go 'head, Ly..." He nudges his daughter and she looks at him like she's afraid of me. He nudges her again though.

"...Here doe." She leans forward off her dad's chest and hands me a clear tupperware container with a blue lid. "Thank you for...um...givin' me a garaffe." Oh my god, she's so sweet. I take the container from her. "I maked coopies..."

"Aw, thank you Lyla." I tell her thank you and she buries her face in Alex's neck. She baked me cookies? Just to say thank you for giving her my little giraffe charm? It's been a while since I gave that to her. I thought for sure she forgot all about how I gave it to her. I thought she might have lost it by now. It's a small little sparkly giraffe charm, for crying out loud. But she baked me cookies to say thank you? She's so adorable. I turn to Alex. "You really didn't have to do this...this is was really sweet of you."

"Not my idea." He shakes his head. No, he's not tired. He's very clearly embarrassed and something about the look on his face tells me that this isn't the first time his daughter's gotten him into an awkward situation. "It was all her idea. I told her to thank you the next time she saw you and she insisted that we bake you cookies." I nod my head slowly. "...Her mother used to bake cookies for the book club and...I guess maybe she just thought that baking cookies is a good thank you...I don't know." I keep nodding pretty slowly. I'm trying to make him think that I think this is awkward. I'm not weirded out by this though. I think this is really sweet and when I did my student teaching, I sat in and observed a kindergarten class once so I know how blunt and forward children can be. I believe him when he says that it was all her idea. "Look, they're probably not that good...I found the recipe online and I'm not a good baker and they're sort of...burned, but if I didn't bring you the damn cookies, I might have had to kill my daughter. So yeah..."

"I'm sure they taste fine." My lips curl up into a very natural smile. "I really appreciate this." I lick my lips and look at Lyla. She's still hiding in her dad's neck. I look at Alex again. His eyes are such a pretty color and I like this hair. His hair looks really soft. I kind of want to touch it. "Well um...my mother taught me to never give containers back empty..." I tuck my hair behind my ear and look at the cookies in the container. They're chocolate chip. "I'm not a very good cook either, so you can either...eat what I put back in the container or throw it out. I won't be offended. But I can't give it back empty. It's just how I was raised."

"No, I understand." He shrugs his shoulders. "Again, Jo...sorry if we disrupted your night. I know it's sort of late and you're busy...but like I said, she really wanted to give you these tonight. She's been talking about her new friend Jo for a while now."

"I'm not busy and believe me, you didn't disrupt anything. I was just...making myself something for dinner, that's all." I shake my head. "...Am I your friend, Lyla?" I put my hand on her back. She nods at me. "That's awesome. I could use a friend to play with around here." She lifts her head up and looks at me but it's still very clear that she doesn't want to be put down or let go. "Can I hug you?" She shakes her head. "No? Well can I have a high-five for the cookies?"

"Give her a hug, Lyla...she's your friend, remember?" He kisses her cheek and my heart melts from the cuteness. "Go 'head and hug her...I'm right here." She leans toward me very, very slowly.

I wrap my arms around her little body and give her a hug. "Thank you for the cookies, honey. I'm gonna eat them all, right before I go to bed tonight." Just when I start to pull away from the hug I'm giving her, she actually puts her arms around me and hugs me back. "Awwww, thank you." I rub her back. "You have a sweet little girl, Alex."

"Yeah, she's sweet...a little shy, but sweet, I guess." He shrugs his shoulders again. He shrugs a lot. I wonder if it's something he does when he's nervous or uncomfortable. Do I make him nervous? "Um...I guess I should say thank you too. For being so nice to her , I mean. She doesn't talk to a lot of people so thanks for being nice about it."

"It's no problem. I...I should be the one thanking her, it seems. I've only been here for two weeks and a three year old has been the nicest person to me thus far." I laugh a little and so does he. I won't beat around the bush and lie about it, this whole situation is a little bit awkward. I've talked to his daughter more than I've talked to him and he shows up at my doorstep with cookies in tow. This is kind of awkward but there's a part of me—and I don't know how big that part is—but part of me wants to keep talking to him. "So is it just...you and Lyla at your house? You two seem pretty close. Or that other guy...the one who came out to eat with you guys. Is he with you guys too?"

"That's my dad. He watches her for me while I go to work but no, he doesn't live with us. It's just me and Lyla. I guess you could say we're close." He's looking at me from head-to-toe like he's sizing me up or something. "What about you? Anybody else here with you?"

"No, just me. I'm from Massachusetts, actually." I tousle my hair with my fingers and flip a little strand of it over my shoulder. I tap my fingers along the lid of the container. "You work up at the um...the Children's Hospital in Pensacola, right? Or...no?"

"Confirmed." He nods once. "How'd you figure?"

"...Lot of chatter around here about you." I admit. "I just thought I'd take the chance to clear up the rumors."

"...What else you hear about me?" He narrows his eyes and lifts his head.

"I hear that you work at a hospital, you're a single dad..." I decide to leave out the part about his wife dying and him being an eligible bachelor...and the part that Kaylee told me a few days ago about him supposedly having a big you know what. "You're a nice guy...you live in a frat house with seventeen other guys...you know, the usual." I shrug and he tilts his head. "...Totally joking about the frat house thing." That makes him laugh; genuinely, laugh.

"It's a shame that you're joking really...the only true thing you said was about the frat house." He mumbles and I laugh so hard that my stomach hurts for a second. "Yeah, I'm actually a single mother..." I laugh again.

"Daddy...we go home right now, kay? Home. I pee peed." Lyla taps him on his cheek. She's so godly adorable, my goodness. "We go home."

"Alright, Ly...we'll go home." He sighs. "I guess we'll see you later, Jo."

"I'll see you guys." I take a step back towards my door. "Bye Lyla, thank you for my cookies." Lyla waves at me. "Bye Alex."

"We'll see you, Jo." He turns to leave but I see Lyla tap him on his cheek again. "What, Ly?" She whispers something in his ear. "...Hurry up." He puts her down on my porch and as soon as she's out of his grasp, she runs over to me and throws her arms around my legs. My heart is melting by the second.

"Bye Lyla...I'll see you later." I put the cookies down on the ground and kneel to give her a proper hug. "I'll see you later sweetheart."

"Bye bye, doe... doe...doe." She says bye to me but starts tapping my arm. "Hey doe..."

"Yes honey?" I can't stop smiling at how cute she is.

"...You come ova...we play wiff my ponies, kay?" She won't look me in my eye but she's talking to me. She's looking at the ground. "I got ponies..." I look up at Alex and he's just shaking his head like he doesn't know what to do with her.

"Alright, honey. I'll come over and play with your ponies one day..." I nod my head. Alex is still shaking his head. "One day..."

"Come on, Lyla." He just holds his hand out, clearly having secondhand embarrassment for his child. I don't know why he's so embarrassed though. Playing ponies with a three year old could be the highlight of my move to Florida.

Looks like I've got me a new friend.


	13. Considerate (Consider It)

"Are you sure you don't want a ride home, sweetie?" asks Lucille as she hurriedly files through a stack of twenties to count out my charge tips. "I get off in an hour, if you wait I could swing you home." She counts a hundred dollars out of twenties and sits the stack in front of me. I shake my head at her and slip my hand into a bag of barbecue potato chips. I'm doing my pickup before I leave. I didn't have time to do it during my shift because we got a really bad lunch rush around 12:30 so I was super busy. Tony doesn't mind if we do pickups after our shifts are over but he prefers us to do them during, so he can count out our registers before we leave. Pickups are when we have over $500 in the register at one point in time. We're not supposed to have over $500 in our registers at any point in time, in case we get robbed at gunpoint or something. Tony invented pickups because he would rather us give out say, $30 to a robber if he demanded everything in the register, as opposed to giving him $500 or so. I silently mouth numbers as I count out the money to myself. "You sure you want to walk, Jo?" I nod my head and try to keep track, as I'm already at $300. "Alright, suit yourself. Here are your charge tips... $142." I nod again. I'm almost at 500 and I'm really trying not to lose count. 460, 480, 500.

I grab a rubber band and tie it around the stack of $500. "I have to stop a couple places on my way home, that's why I want to walk. I have to stop at Sherwin-Williams and at the corner store. It's fine, I'm alright with walking." I unzip my pickup bag and shove the money inside. "Thank you for asking though. I appreciate the thought." I zip the bag back up and climb down off the bar stool. "Is Tony in his office or the break room?" She shrugs her shoulders and busies herself with making a fresh pot of coffee. I also don't feel like staying here another hour while I wait for her to drive me home, either. I know that I would probably sound ungrateful if I told her that I don't want to wait an hour so I just decided to leave that little bit out. It's not really that her getting off in an hour is an issue because it wouldn't be the first time I got off before one of my coworkers and waited for them to drive me home, it's just that I have other things I want to do today and I don't have time to sit around in a restaurant for an hour while I wait for a ride when I could walk home in half the time. I drop my pickup bag in the pickup slot since nobody seems to know where Tony is. I prefer to hand him my pickup bag myself instead of dropping it off in the pickup slot but whatever, I guess.

I want to stop at Sherwin-Williams and see if I can find a can of light blue paint for my kitchen. I made enough money over the last two days to actually consider painting my house. I called the cable company before I came into work yesterday and scheduled for them to come install my cable sometime this Saturday between the hours of 10:00 and 2:00. I got the cheapest possible plan. I have all the basic channels and internet with the plan and I'm not going to pay any more than $90 a month for it. I didn't buy a TV, I just decided to rent one from the Rent-A-Center downtown. They're supposed to deliver the TV tomorrow morning. I think I'm just going to rent a couch from the Rent-A-Center too. Not right away though, eventually. I want to pay the TV off before I rent a couch too. I'm already going to be paying $26 a week for the TV. I looked into how much it would be for me to rent a couch along with the TV and the couch I had my eye on would've cost $30 a week, which isn't bad but I can't afford to pay $56 a week. I'm tired of sitting in my house staring at the four walls so I caved and decided to rent the TV before the couch. "I'll see you tomorrow, Luce." I give her a quick hug while she's fighting with the coffee maker. After I let her go, the gate that leads behind the bar opens up and Kaylee walks through it. "Bye Kay." I wave at her.

"Jo, you're leaving?" She wrinkles her eyebrows and tilts her head. "I thought you didn't get off until 2:00. I told Jordan you were available..." She puts down a handful of menus and leans against the counter. "You get off at 1:00 instead?"

"Yeah, my shift was over at one." I tuck my hair behind my ears. "Why, what's wrong? Do I have to say over?" Please don't tell me I have to stay over. I freaking hate it when that happens. I hate it when the hosts screw up the schedule, think our shifts are over at a different time than what they actually are and seat people in our sections. That makes me so mad.

"No, I'll tell Austin to take your section. Someone requested you and Jordan asked me if you were available because your name wasn't on the board anymore and I just looked over and saw you so I figured you didn't get off until 2:00. It's my fault, I should've paid attention. I'll tell Austin to take over though." Kaylee pulls a black ponytail holder off her wrist and ties her long, dark brown hair back with it. When I first met her, I thought for sure Kaylee was either mixed race or Indian. She has dark brown hair and really tan skin, just like Indian skin. But the other day, her sister, Brittany, came in here to bring her lunch from home and her sister has blonde hair and blue eyes. They have the same mom and the same dad. Turns out Kaylee and her family are Italian and Kaylee got the hardcore Italian genes.

"Someone requested me?" I untie my apron before I accidentally walk out of here with it still on. I shove my notepad in my back pocket so I don't forget it and fold up my apron. "Do you know who requested me?" If someone really did request me, this only marks the second time I've been requested. The first time someone requested me, some drunk guy came over to my section from the bar and asked if "the cute one with the pretty eyes and sexy smile" could serve him. It took us three tries between Lucille, Kaylee and Macy to figure out that he was talking about me. The whole time, Luke was in the background insisting the man was referring to him though. Anyway, I don't get requested often. Lucille gets requested quite a bit but I think it's because she's been here the longest and she's really personable. I'm too new to get requested. "Do you know what they looked like?"

"I have no idea. All I know is that Jordan sat whoever it was in section four. Anyone you know in section four?" She steps to the side, allowing me to take a quick glance at everyone in section four. "Anyone familiar?" She looks with me.

"Kaylee, I've only been here for two weeks and two days...I don't know anyone." I crane my neck to see if I know anyone in section four. I was working in section seven, actually. Sections six and seven were mine today but when someone requests you, they're allowed to be seated wherever we have an available seat. It's just up to the requested one to remember where they were seated and up to the requested one to serve them. I'm looking for the same guy that requested me the first time. He was older, maybe in his 40s or 50s. He has longer, black hair with a few gray strands here and there. I don't see him. "...I don't know who it could've been, but I'm leaving." I shrug my shoulders and throw my apron underneath the bar until I work again, which isn't until Thursday. It's Tuesday now. "Tell Austin I said I'm sorry." I take one more look at section four and I'm really puzzled at who it could've been. Kaylee pats my shoulder as a silent goodbye and gathers up the menus she initially put down to tie her hair up. "...Wait, Kay..." I narrow my eyes a little so I can see better, just so I can be sure that it's actually him. It is. "...I know who it was."

"Who?" She stands next to me again and looks. "Which one was it?"

"Him." I subtly point out the mystery man that requested me to serve him. He's sitting alone in a booth, flinging through the menu like he's barely even reading it. He's wearing a maroon colored t-shirt and even though his back is facing me, I know who he is. I'd recognize that soft-looking brown hair anywhere. I don't know why I'm smiling but I am. He closes the menu and leans back against the booth, turns his head to the side and sighs. I can tell he sighed because his shoulders dramatically shoot up and then slowly come back down.

"...No freaking way." Kaylee's jaw drops. "He requested you?! Girl, you better put that apron back on and go serve that man!" She puts her hands on my back and pushes me. "What's he doing, requesting you anyway?! Jo, go serve him!"

"I clocked out already!" I hold onto the bar counter so she doesn't make me fall since she's pushing me. "I'm off the clock, Kay...I can't."

"If you don't go serve him, Jo..." She takes her hands off me. "Lucille, guess what!" She energetically skips over to the other end of the bar to Lucille, who's still messing with the coffee maker. "He came in here and he requested _Jo_ to be his server. Can you believe that?! And he's not even looking at the menu...it's like he came in here specifically to see her. And she won't put the damn apron back on and serve him. Talk some sense into her, Luce." She's smiling and rambling to Lucille. "He said he wants _Jo_ to be his server." Lucille looks at me too. I bite my lip to choke back a giggle and a smile. "He likes him some Jo..." I bury my face in my hands and try hard to keep them from knowing that they're making me blush. "He wants him some Jo."

"It's not like that!" I roll my eyes and look at the two of them. "He's my neighbor...trust me, it's not like that." I turn my head to look at him again. He's looking at the dessert menu now. "I'm not serving him...but I'm gonna go talk to him. And trust me...it's not like that." I open up the gate and hear the two of them still teasing my name. "I hate you two." I roll my eyes at them again, shake my head and slip out of the gate. I fix my hair as best as I can without a mirror and walk past the lobster tank, past the bar and through sections 1-3. As I get closer and closer to his table, I notice that he truly is alone. At first, I thought maybe he had Lyla with him but she was just too short to the point that I couldn't see her in the booth with him from a distance but no; he truly is by himself. Is it weird that I know exactly how long it's been since I've seen him? It's been exactly four days. I only know that because the last time I saw him was when Lyla brought me the cookies. I've been too busy with work to have baked something to put back in the container before I return it, but I swear I plan to. I probably could have seen him sooner but again, I've been way too busy with work to even think about walking past his house to catch the bus. I haven't been needing to catch the bus into town for anything lately. I make it to the table he's sitting at and fix my hair again before I greet him. "...Hey."

He looks up from the dessert menu he was looking at and grins at me. "Hey." He mumbles and his grin disappears. His grin seemed forced anyway. He looks like he didn't really want to smile in the first place. "Can I get a beer? Don't care what brand, just a beer please." He runs his hand through his hair and sighs again.

"I'm actually off the clock. My shift ended at 1:00 so I'm not your server..." He looks away from me and mumbles, "oh." I don't know him much, but I do know that this isn't Alex. I've only ever talked to him three times before and every time I've talked to him, he was a little bit happier than this. Well, as happy as any man that just lost his wife can be, at least. "Hey Austin..." I stop Austin just as he's walking by our table. "My shift ended at one, so this table is yours. I need a beer...Cult 45, okay?" Austin nods at me and hurries off to get a beer. He kind of looks like he's tired. His hair is wild and untamed, he has bags under his eyes and his eyes are heavy. "...Rough day?" I tilt my head and look at him. He just nods. "...Mind if I sit?" He shrugs. I sit down in the booth across from him and fold my hands.

Austin brings back the can of beer and puts it in front of him. "Thanks, man..." Alex mumbles and quickly pops the can opener on top of the can open. "...Can I buy you a beer?" He offers and I shake my head. "Can I buy you a martini or something? Glass of wine?"

"...How 'bout a coffee?" I retort. He tilts his head downward in sort of a half-nod. I clear my throat and stop Austin again. "Can you bring me a coffee?" I ask him and he hurries away to get me a coffee. "So where's my little buddy?" I sit up and try to lighten the mood by smiling and asking about Lyla. "I was hoping you'd have her with you."

"Nah, she's with my dad. I'm coming back from work...gotta go pick her up when I leave here." Austin brings back my coffee. He sits it in the middle of the table and walks away again. "I don't really get a chance to hang out without her, you know? Feels a little weird but it feels good too." He turns the beer can up to his lips and takes another sip. "So if your shift was over at 1:00...why are you still here?"

"I had some things I had to do before I could leave. I thought about waiting around for my friend to get off...so she could give me a ride home...but I have too many things to do today. I'd rather walk home." I empty a few sugar packets into my coffee and absolutely no creamer. I'm a black coffee kind of girl. "But you know...certain distractions decide to come in...request me and take up my time...now I'd might as well let her drive me home." I stir my coffee with a coffee stirrer and take a sip. He narrows his eyes at me when he realizes by "certain distractions", I meant him. I raise my eyebrows and smirk at him. "So how was work Rough day at it?" He just stares at me with a glossed over look in his eyes. "Or we can just not talk about that." I shrug. He doesn't really seem like he wants to talk about work and I guess I can understand that. When I have a crappy day at work, I don't really ever want to talk about it either. "How's...Lyla?" He keeps looking at me with that look and the only way I know that he's alive is because he actually blinks. "...I'll just drink my coffee."

"It's fine, Jo. I was just thinking about something." He shakes his head and rubs his eyes. "Work _was_ rough...how'd you guess?" I make it blatantly obvious that I'm looking at the fact that he has a beer sitting in front of him. He smirks. "Shut up, Jo."

"I didn't say anything!" I cover my mouth and laugh into my hand. "I'm just saying...I don't think it's quite normal for you to come have a drink after work...especially when you work in a children's hospital...and you don't come have a drink every day after work. Something about today must've been different. That's all I'm saying." I lean back against the booth and sigh. "I wish I could have a drink after work sometimes. It's like that sometimes."

"So why don't you?" He nudges his beer towards me, as if he wants me to take a sip. First of all, he'd trust me enough to let me drink off of him? And he'd drink off of me? I think he has a gift. Not one of those, artistic, musical, creative type of gifts that everyone always talks about, either. It's more of a...he has a good judge of character kind of gift. "Everyone needs a drink sometimes."

"I don't drink." I shake my head and scoot it back to him. "Thanks though." He takes the beer back and drinks a little more of it. "So...what could've happened at a _children's_ hospital that's so bad that you would need a drink after work? Too many babies throw up on you today? Change one too many crappy diapers?"

He chuckles very softly but doesn't smile. "...Lost a patient, rough day because of that." I wrinkle my eyebrows at him and he taps his fingers on the side of the beer can. "I had a set of twins I've been taking care of for the past two months. They were conjoined at birth...attached at the hip, literally. We separated them and I was in charge of their post-operative care. I discharged the one twin last week and her sister had an infection, but nothing that worried me much. I came into work this morning and she was doing worse so I pushed her discharge date back to next week. Went in to check on her this afternoon...she was gone. Rough day at work." He sighs and takes one more sip of beer.

"I'm sorry." I feel like a real asshole for trying to make a joke out of it now. I guess I never really thought that people could die on his job. Now, I'm not stupid and it makes sense that kids die in a kid's hospital but I just wasn't thinking that maybe his day could've been bad due to that. "I'd drink to that too." I admit and I really didn't lie to him about that. I would drink to that. If I worked at a hospital and a baby died on my watch, I think I'd get pissy drunk over that. "Really, I am. That must've been really hard." I put my head down and push my coffee cup away from me. For some reason, I don't really want to drink it anymore. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah...not the first time I lost a patient, won't be the last either. Doesn't get any easier though." He dusts off the last of his beer, covers his mouth and belches. "You still need a ride home?" He lifts up and digs his wallet from his back pocket. He opens it up and sifts through it.

"No, I can walk. I have a few stops and I don't want you to go out of your way. I'll be fine walking." I scoot out of the booth and dig in my own back pocket for the wad of cash I made waitressing today. I take a five dollar bill from my stack and hand it to him. "For the coffee. Thanks for letting me sit and chat."

"Jo, you literally live right down the street. How much out of my way could I possibly be going?" He completely ignores the fact that I'm handing him five dollars. I ease it towards him a little more, giving him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he just didn't see it. "I said I'd buy the coffee, didn't I?" I bite my lip and shove the money back in my pocket, since he insists. "Come on." He motions for me to follow him.

"Alex, seriously...I'll walk. I have to make a couple stops and it's really not a big deal for me to walk. Thank you for offering." I follow him anyway, not because I intend to get in the car with him but because I'm headed for the door as well.

"Where do you have to stop?" He stands in line so he can pay his bill but turns to talk to me.

"I have to go to Sherwin-Williams and the convenience store." I stand next to him since he's talking to me. Kaylee and Lucille are both looking at me through the break room window. Kaylee's mouthing my name with the same intensity that she was whenever we first heard that he requested me. Lucille is giving me a thumbs-up through the window and I still can't stand the both of them. How many times do I have to tell them that it's not like that? I'm not attracted to Alex and even if I was, it's not like I would have the balls to go after him. He only just lost his wife a little while ago and me myself, I'm too hung up on Mark to even consider getting into a new relationship right now; or ever, for that matter. I don't want to get with anyone. I didn't come to Florida to get into a relationship with anybody. I came to Florida to make a better life for myself and that doesn't really include relationships, especially relationships with men that are widowed and have kids. I mouth "screw you" to both of them and they laugh at me. "I'll see you later, Alex. Give Lyla a hug for me." I pat his shoulder, partly to say goodbye and partly to piss Lucille and Kaylee off. He nods and moves up in line to pay his bill.

I wave at Lucille and Kaylee and head for the exit. It was nice talking to him for a little while but I want to go home now. I open the door and walk down the steps that lead onto the sidewalk. I walk past the parking lot and head off in the direction of Sherwin-Williams. I'm gonna look to see how much the paint is. If it's not too expensive, I'll go ahead and buy blue paint for my kitchen and purple paint for my bedroom. I feel like a kid on Christmas morning, excited to go home and play with my new toys. I'm tired as hell from work today but it's not even 3:00 in the afternoon yet and I don't even have to work the evening. If I don't go home and start painting today, I will have just wasted the day away.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I fish my car keys out of my front pocket and unlock it as I walk towards it. Man, today was rough at work. Just having to listen to Mr. and Mrs. Marshall cry and weep over their dead daughter's body...Ii still can't get the sound of Mrs. Marshall crying out of my head. I rarely ever cry over losing my patients because I know that it's just part of the job, but today I just had to. I had to go excuse myself into an on-call room and take a moment alone. The unexpected deaths are the worst ones. I usually have a grasp on my emotions when I deal with the cancer patients or the patients with incurable diseases...the patients I know don't have a fighting chance in hell to survive. But Megan's death was so sudden and it really hit me like a ton of red bricks today. It was just a simple kidney infection and it was manageable. One minute I checked on her and she was still doing okay but the next second, she was cold and her lips were blue. I went over and over and over her chart a million times just to see if there was maybe something I did wrong and I couldn't find anything. I even had Arizona go over her chart to see if she could tell me something I should've done differently, something that could've prevented little Megan Marshall's death. All our efforts came up dry. There was nothing anyone could've done. The whole thing just made me want to go get a beer, hold my daughter and thank the high heavens that she's healthy.

I climb into the driver's seat of my truck and shove the keys in the ignition. I look at my front windshield and see little droplets of water, so I reach forward and flick the windshield wipers on. I throw the car in park and look back to make sure I'm clear enough to back out of the parking slot. I hear the roll of thunder so I look up and sure enough, the skies are clouding over. I'd better go get Lyla sooner, rather than later. She hates...ABSOLUTELY HATES, thunderstorms. I think she hates them so much because she remembers the time last year when Jenna and I took her to the beach. It started storming while we were at the beach and the waves got really big and it scared the hell out of her. Ever since then, she'll cry and pace around when there's a thunderstorm. It's thunderstorming and she's at my dad's shop, which is not some place where a thunderstorm-phobic three year old should be. Before I even pull out of the parking lot, it starts pouring down raining. It's raining pretty hard too, so I click the windshield wipers and put them on continuous motion. I lean forward and look both ways before I pull out of the parking lot. Lighting cracks across the sky and thunder booms. I swear, thunderstorms in beach towns are a million times worse than thunderstorms anywhere else. Lucky we don't live too close to the beach though because when the tide picks up during thunderstorms, places that are too close to the beach tend to flood. I drive slowly, since the rain is coming down pretty hard and continuous. I can't see too clearly.

If I keep going straight and make the left turn at the intersection coming up, I'll be at my dad's shop to get Lyla in less than two minutes. But if I keep going straight and make the left turn at the intersection coming up, my conscious will also eat me alive. So instead of going straight and making the left turn, I flick my turn signal on and turn right. I look out my passenger's side window as I creep along the road slowly. I slow down even more when I see her, driving slow enough to keep up with the pace that she's walking. I roll down the window and lean across my car so I don't have to yell too loudly. "...Still wanna walk home?!" She's soaking wet. Her hair is drenched and straight down instead of wavy and bouncy like it usually is and her shirt is hanging off her body from the weight of the water that soaked into it. She stops walking and looks at me. "Get in the car, Jo!"

She looks both ways before crossing and jogs to my car. I unlock the door for her and she climbs right in. "...Thank you." She pushes her soaking wet hair away from her face and folds her arms across her chest, like she's cold. I turn on the heat just for her. "That'll teach me to turn down free rides, I guess." Her bottom jaw is trembling and she's looking out the window. Her hair is a lot longer that it looks when she has it all wavy and done up. It comes all the way to her chest and touches her boobs when it's wet. I think the rain might've taken off any makeup she had on because she has freckles on her face that I didn't notice when we were sitting in the restaurant. "You don't have to take me to the paint store. You can just take me home..." She crosses her legs in the passenger's seat and rests her arms on top of her legs. She's not very tall but she has some pretty long legs. Her legs take up about 75% of her body. I notice that she has a pretty thick layer of hair on her arms and it's standing up on all ends. She has freckles on her arms too but these freckles are different than the ones she has on her face. The freckles on her arms look like someone took a brown marker and poked her all over the place. I make the turn that leads to the parking lot of Sherwin-Williams. "Alex, I said you could take me home...I don't have to go buy paint today."

"I'm not taking you here. I have to go get Lyla from my dad's." I turn into the alley that runs behind the paint store and drive through it. Picking her up kind of _was_ out of my way, but I wouldn't like myself very much if I didn't at least try to pick her up knowing that she was walking in the rain. I kind of figured she'd be walking towards the paint store but actually finding her was sheer luck...or fate, whatever you want to call it. "What do you need paint for anyway?" I make the next turn and slow down since we're closer to the shop. "Are you trying to paint something? Like...a room or something?"

"I want to paint my kitchen." She starts running her hand along her arm as if she's brushing the air on it downwards. "My house isn't exactly a picture from a Better Home & Garden Magazine...it could use some color." I stop the car outside the rundown car repair shop that my dad co-owns with one of his buddies. It's pretty beat down and old but it gets more business than you'd think. "Your dad lives here?" She raises one of her eyebrows and stares out the window. It's still raining pretty hard outside and the window is covered with water so she rolls it down a little. "Is there an apartment or something on top?"

"He owns this place...and no, he doesn't live here. He works here." I turn the car off. "I don't really have anyone else to look after her while I work so if my dad has to be at the shop, she has to go to the shop right along with him." I sigh. "It sucks...and it's dangerous and I wish she didn't have to be here but I need someone to watch her and it's better than nothing, I guess." I take the keys out of the ignition. "I'll be right back."

"Wait..." She stops looking out the window and turns her head to look back at me. I stop in the middle of getting out of the car to look at her too. "Don't they offer daycare down at the...YMCA or something? I mean, I don't know much, but..." Her cheek bulges outward, signaling that she put her tongue in it. "There has to be somewhere else you can send her...somewhere that doesn't involve heavy machinery."

"Yeah, they do have daycare at the YMCA. They also have a daycare at my job, but if you haven't noticed, _princess,_ I don't have the normal three year old. What good would sending her to a daycare be if she won't talk to anyone?" For the first time since I've ever talked to Jo, she annoys me with her last statement. It's like she's trying to make it seem like she knows more than I do. She doesn't think that I've already thought about sending her to daycare? She doesn't think that I'd rather exhaust ANY other option than have my three year old sit in a nasty, sweaty car shop all day? It's like she has no regard for the fact that someone's situation isn't as perfect as hers is. "I'll be back."

"Wait again." Her voice is quieter this time. She can tell that she offended me, I'm sure. "I didn't mean to...intrude on a situation I clearly know nothing about. I'm sorry." She bites her lip. "I was only trying to help. I really am sorry."

"It's fine." I shake my head and look away from her. Great. Now I feel bad for snapping at her. I'm usually really good at telling when someone is apologizing just for the sake of apologizing and when someone really means it when they apologize. I can see in her eyes, her body language and in the tone of her voice that she really is sorry for having offended me. I sigh. "Why don't you come in here with me?" She squints her eyes at me and tilts her head, as if she's trying to figure out my hidden agenda. The least I can do is offer her some free paint, right? I snapped at her, she's sorry and as much as I hate to admit it, I sort of like her. I like her personality, I mean. I wouldn't call her a friend just yet, but I could see her becoming a friend of mine. Someone I can finally invite over for a beer...or even a coffee, since she doesn't drink. She's more of an acquaintance so far. "There's some paint in here...you can take what you like. My dad won't mind."

"Alex, you don't have to. You've done enough, really." She shakes her head. "I'll just wait right here."

"Jo, come pick out some paint." Since asking her doesn't seem to work well, it seems like telling her is the best way for me to go. I open up my car door and step out. She opens up her side of the car too and climbs outside, shielding her eyes from the rain. I find that kind of ironic, considering the fact that she's already wet from having walked about five minutes in a torrential downpour. "You're a very stubborn person, you know. It's kind of annoying." I walk towards the entrance of my dad's shop. I make a mental note to stick an umbrella in my car. She walks at a considerable distance behind me. She keeps her head down. I don't know if I offended her by calling her annoying or not so just to be on the safe side, I pull open the door and hold it for her. "Your stubbornness is annoying though."

"Your _asshole-ness_ is annoying but I'm not complaining." She grabs the door off of me and I walk in ahead of her. I think she meant to mumble that under her breath to the point where I couldn't hear it but I did. She mumbled it but I have good hearing. I raise my eyebrow and when she sees me, she realizes that I heard her. "...Oops. I'm sorry, that just came out." She covers her mouth.

"Don't apologize, you already said it." I chuckle and open up the second set of doors. It smells like old tires and oil in here. Every time I come in here, I grow more and more uncomfortable with the fact that my baby girl has to spend her time in here. It smells like hell in here and she stays in here for hours on end. "Paint's over there...pick something out." I point her towards the paint shelf and head for the back, where I know my dad and Lyla will be. Scratch that, I _really_ like her. Her smart mouth, wittiness and quickness remind me of myself when I was younger. Her stubbornness really does annoy the hell out of me though. "Daaaaad." I push the swinging door open. "Lyla?" I don't see either one of them. "Dad...Lyla?"

"Dada!" I hear the clopping sound of Lyla's shoes but I don't see her. "Dada, dada, dada!" She runs from behind a car and when I look at the car, I see my dad's legs sticking out from underneath it. She runs to me and throws her arms around my legs. "Hi dada!"

I pick her up. "Hey Ly...what's up?" I kiss her cheek and take a long look at her. Every time I pick her up from my dad's, no matter where she's been, I always look at her first. I try to make sure there aren't any bumps, bruises, scratches or marks that weren't there when I dropped her off. But today when I look at her, I'm looking at her because I missed her. After today's rough day of work, losing little Megan...all I wanted to do was go home and hold my own baby girl. "What'd you do today?" I should probably tell her beforehand that I have Jo with me. She still considers Jo to be "her buddy" but I'm a little worried about how she'll react when she finds out that I have Jo with me. The last time she saw Jo, when she gave her the cookies, she acted out a little. I don't know what part of me and Jo talking she didn't like, but there was a point where she told me that she peed, just so we could leave. When I got home and changed her, her pull-up was dry. It sort of reminded me of that day at the supermarket where she made us leave while that woman was talking to me. I don't really know how she feels about Jo though, because she wanted to hug her...but she wanted to leave at the same time. Maybe she just doesn't want me to talk to Jo.

"I work on a car wiff Pappy and we getted...Burguh King. I eated ticken nuggets and Pessi and fwench fwies." She's petting my head. "I miss you dada...you home."

"Yeah, I'm home." I kiss her on her lips and carry her over to where my dad is laying. "Hey dad...I'm taking her home now." I put my hand in the middle of Lyla's back. "Anything I should know about today?"

He slides out from underneath the car and sits up. "She had Burger King for lunch. She didn't eat all her food but she said she was full. She had nuggets, fries and a Pepsi...I gave her a banana too, from the fridge. She was good today though. She sat and played on my phone for a little bit. She didn't take a nap though...she's probably tired. She was good though. Next time you bring her to me, pack some more toys. She gets bored sitting here all day." He picks himself up off the ground and he looks so dirty but my dad always looks dirty. He works hard when he's in the shop. His shirt is grease-stained, he has oil all underneath his nails and his face is filthy. "Lemme give her a kiss." He puts the wrench he was holding on the ground and walks over to us. "Bye bye munchkin." He kisses her cheek. "Pappy will see you later."

"Buh bye Pappy." Lyla waves at him and puts her head on my shoulder. I can tell she hasn't taken a nap today. "Dada...I..." She's interrupted by a yawn. "Want hog dogs for dinna." She closes her eyes. "We have hog dogs?"

"Yeah, we can have hot dogs." I nod my head. "Oh yeah...hey dad, I'm taking a couple cans of paint. I'm helping one of my friends paint her kitchen...I'm taking some paint. I'll bring it back if she doesn't use it all." He nods and sits back down on the board. He lies back and wheels himself back underneath the car he was working on. "Alright, come on Ly." She's quiet and sucking on a pacifier, so I have to look down and see if she's sleeping. She's still awake but I know she's gonna end up falling asleep. I don't want her to though. I want her to stay awake until we get home so I can bathe her, feed her and put her to bed properly. It's only about 3:00 but it's already too late in the day for her to take a nap. If she takes a nap right now, she won't go to bed tonight. "Hey Ly, guess what?" She says nothing. "...I got your buddy with me. She's getting some paint...and she's gonna ride home with us..."

"Weally?" She lifts her head up. "Where?"

"Right here..." I open the doors again and Jo's standing next to the paint shelf, holding a can in one hand. "There she is..."

"Hi Doe!" She waves at her. "Hi Doe!"

"Hi Lyla." Jo waves back and looks up at the paint shelf.

"Get everything you need?" I carry Lyla over to where Jo's standing. "What color you get?"

"Blue. But I'm trying to decide if I should paint my kitchen first, my bathroom, or my bedroom... I saw this pretty purple color I want to use for my bedroom...and then this light brown for my bathroom. And then I was thinking red for my living room. There's just so many colors..." She has a can of blue paint in her hand though. "I don't know how to pick just one to start."

"...So then don't." I stand next to her and look. "Get everything...kill a bunch of birds with one stone. Go 'head and grab all the colors you want. It's free paint...I already told my dad I'm taking a couple cans. Might as well just grab everything you need and you can choose where to start when you get home."

"I can't carry four cans of paint. I'm barely making it with one." She tilts her head and looks at Lyla. "Someone's sleepy..."

"Yeah, she didn't nap today." I look over at her. She's sleeping soundly on my shoulder. "...Will you take her? I'll grab the paint for you if you take her."

"Oh..." I can tell I caught her way off guard with that. "Um...yeah...okay." She's stuttering and I think she might be a little nervous, though I don't know why. All I'm asking is for her to hold my daughter. She puts the can of paint down on the ground and holds her arms out. I gently pawn Lyla off on her and size up the paint shelf. I guess maybe it is a big deal that I'm actually letting her hold my kid because I don't let just anyone hold Lyla but I'm a pretty good judge of character and I don't think Jo is the kind of hurt anyone. She holds Lyla like a seasoned professional which again, makes no sense why she was so nervous to hold her in the first place. Lyla's head is on her shoulder and Jo's arms are underneath her butt for support. She looks natural.

"What colors did you say you wanted?" I stop looking at her holding my daughter and look at the paint.

"That light brown there..." She motions toward it with her head and I immediately know what she means. I take the can she wants off the shelf. "That purple, right there next to the teal..." I grab that can too. "Red...the red next to that color called Tuscan Sunset." I grab that too. "And that's it...thank you." I nod once and pick up the cans, two in each hand. When I turn back around, I see her bouncing Lyla very gently. I motion towards the door and she catches my drift. She opens the door with her back and holds it for me.

She's really good with my kid.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"Thank you so much...for everything today, Alex. I really do appreciate this." I hold open my front door for him while he drags my paint in the house for me. Initially I told him that I would carry the paint in the house myself because A, I feel like he's already done enough for me today and B, I didn't really want him to see how cruddy my house really is. But on the ride home, I realized that he wasn't judgmental and if my house was cruddy, he wouldn't care. He seems like a really decent guy and I'm glad that we're...friends. Up until he offered to carry the paint out to the car for me, I didn't know if we could be considered friends but I think we are now. He sets my paint cans down on the floor of my kitchen like I asked him to and stands upright. "Um...I'll talk to you later?" I fold my arms across my chest. I feel all sticky and gross from having been rained on earlier. My jeans are skin-tight, soaking wet and they're sticking to my skin. My bra is digging in my skin too and I can only imagine what my underwear are doing. I'm soaking freaking wet. He stands on my porch and looks out towards his car. "...Alex? I'll talk to you later?"

"Yeah, yeah." He nods, attention still on his car that's parked in my driveway. "I have paint brushes in my car, I think. You wanna come grab them? Unless you already have paint brushes." He starts walking towards the steps of my porch.

"...Crap." I roll my eyes at my own stupidity. How in the world did I buy paint but no paint brushes? "Yeah, I'm gonna need those." I giggle at my stupidity and he chuckles as well. I follow him down my driveway and back to his car. In the backseat, Lyla's head is sticking up and she's looking around. She was asleep when we got out of the car, initially. On the way home from his dad's shop, I sat in the backseat with her. I could've gotten in the front obviously, but I didn't want her to wake up so I just got in the back with her and let her lay on my lap. She slept like an angel the entire ride home and when I had to get out of the car, I laid her head down on the seat carefully and made sure she was still asleep. Alex opens up the trunk of his car and rummages around a bit. While he rummages, I stick my head through the back window. "Hey Lyla..." She's so tired. She can barely keep her eyes open, she's sucking on a pacifier and scratching her head. "I'll see you later sweetheart..." Her head drifts forward. "Why don't you lie down?" I open up the door and lean inside the car with her. I have such a soft spot in my heart for babies. I guide her head down on the backseat. "Goodnight honey..." I stroke her hair back, away from her face. Her pacifier starts bobbing like crazy.

"Doe..." Her voice is soft and I can tell she's mid-falling asleep. "...When...you...come pay...ponies wiff me?"

I crack a soft smile. "...Whenever you want me to, honey." I keep stroking her hair. "You gonna come help me paint my room though? You gotta help me paint my room..." I think I might love this little girl. Not like I would love my own baby if I ever had one but more like a baby sister. She's like my little sister or something. She's just so precious and sweet. "Goodnight, Lyla." Once I'm sure she's asleep, I leave her alone. I close the door quietly and walk around back to Alex, who's still rummaging through his trunk. "Alex..." I stand next to him and watch him sift through the junk in his trunk. "Um...look, I know this is a little weird...considering the fact that we've only been...associates for like..two weeks now or whatever, but you did a lot for me in just one day and I feel like I owe you and I don't really know how to..." I stop myself. "I'm ranting, aren't I?" He nods his head and produces an unopened paint kit. It has a tray, a roller and a few different sizes of paint brushes. "Sorry." I clear my throat. "But um..." I take a breath. "If you ever really...need someone to look after her...you know, when you don't want to send her to your dad's shop..." He pauses mid-motion and looks down at the ground, like I just told him that I'm god or something and he's trying to process what I just said. Is it sad that I connect with his three year old more than I connect with him? Not that I dislike Alex because I don't, I really do like him and I appreciate everything he's done for me today, from buying me a coffee to picking me up in the rain. But I really would like to spend more time with his daughter. I just like her a lot. "I could look after her for you...when I'm not working and stuff. It wouldn't be a problem."

He closes his trunk and looks at me. "...That might be something I'm willing to consider."


	14. You Should Go

"So, what's everyone doing for the Fourth?" Luke clips the dust pan back onto the plastic broom handle and sits it up against the bar counter. He weasels his hand into my bag of mini Oreo cookies and helps himself to a couple as he sits down on the bar stool across from where I'm standing and cleaning up the counter. "Anyone going down to that thing they're supposed to be having on the boardwalk?" A chunk of chewed up Oreo flies out of his mouth and lands on the counter in a spot that I just wiped. I turn my nose up at it, spray it with the bleach cleaner and wipe it again. Luke just finished sweeping up the floor, I'm wiping off the counters, Kaylee is wiping down the beer fridge, Lucille is counting out register drawers and Macy is wiping off the hostess podium. All of us worked until closing time today, which means we're in charge of all nightly cleanups. Needless to say my day at work was pretty awesome, considering that I worked with all my favorite people. I scrub a water ring off the counter and half-ass listen to Luke as he continues talking. To be honest, I forgot the Fourth of July is next week. I still haven't been keeping track of the date. Old habits die hard, I guess. "I think me and Mike are gonna go but if it's lame, we're just gonna go down to his parents' house for a cookout. What are you guys gonna do?"

"Probably gonna check out the festival on the boardwalk with Brian." Kaylee slams the beer fridge door shut and walks over to where we're all congregated at the bar counter. "I don't think it's gonna be lame. Or at least I hope it's not going to be lame." She shrugs her shoulders and helps herself to some of my Oreos as well. "It'll beat the heck outta sitting in the house bored, that's for sure."

Macy walks over to us as well, carrying a few loose menus she found at the hostess podium. "Yeah, Ryan said he wants to see what the boardwalk thing is all about too, so I think that's where we're headed. To be honest, all I want is somewhere nice to watch fireworks. I don't care about anything else." Just like everyone else did, Macy sticks her hand in my bag of Oreos and pops a handful in her mouth.

"Me and my husband were thinking about checking that out too, actually. It sounds like it's gonna be really nice and I think it's neat how the fireman's club is sponsoring it. It's about time we have something nice like that in Millerton." Lucille locks up the moneybox and stands beside the rest of us as well. She seems to be the one that's most excited about the Independence Day festival and I think that's because aside from me, she's the only one of us that actually lives in Millerton. Luke lives in a town about ten minutes away from the restaurant called Portage, Macy lives up in Pensacola and Kaylee lives down in Murraysville. Only Lucille and I actually live here in Millerton. "How about you, Jo? Any plans for the Fourth?"

I shake my head and fold up the rag I used to clean the counter. "Nope...no special plans for me." Luke reaches across the counter and heads for my Oreos again. "What the hell? This is not the community bag of Oreos and I'm not feeding the needy. Get your own." I snatch the bag up and take my own handful. "Here...greedy." I throw the rest of whatever's in the bag at him. "Anyway..." I shove a couple Oreos in my own mouth. "I was thinking about going to that thing on the boardwalk too...but I don't think I'm gonna go anymore. I don't have anyone to go with and I don't want to go alone, so I'll probably just sit out on my porch and watch the fireworks from there." I lick cookie crumbs off my lips. "To be honest, I don't really see the hype about the Fourth of July as a holiday." I shrug.

"You don't have anyone to go with?" Kaylee stands next to me and leans against the counter so that I'm forced to look her in her eye. I stick another cookie in my mouth and shake my head. "Wait, you mean to tell me you're not going to be with your man candy? Everyone in Millerton is going to that thing and you mean to tell me that you can't go with your babe? I call bullshit on that."

"He's _not_ my man candy, my babe or anything like that." I roll my eyes, shake my head and turn away from her. "We're just friends and NO...I'm not going anywhere with him."

"Yeah Mace and Luke, that Alex character came in here yesterday and requested for Jo to serve him." Lucille fills Macy and Luke in since the two of them weren't working yesterday. Macy's jaw drops and Luke's eyes widen. "Yep. Jo was off the clock so she didn't serve him, but she sat down and had a coffee with him and they talked for a while." Luke looks at me and wiggles his eyebrows up and down fast, like he's implying something. "Our Jo has a boyfriend, guys...and he's a fine man."

"He's NOT my boyfriend!" I slam the rag I used to wipe the counter and the bleach cleaner down on the counter in front of me. "He's not...my boyfriend, guys. He's just my friend."

"Mhm, we're sure." Kaylee playfully nudges me. "He came in here and said he wanted him some Jo. He wants you, girl...and when a man that sexy wants you, you just gotta let him take you...all the way back to his bedroom." Everyone around me busts out in hardcore laughter and I just blush, out of embarrassment. It's not like that between me and Alex. We're just friends and I'm his babysitter on occasion. We're not romantically attracted to each other. "Jo, you're single aren't you?" I bury my face in my hands so they can't see the redness of my cheeks and just nod. "Then why don't you screw him? If you don't, I will. He came in here, requested you and talked to you for at least half an hour. He wants you."

"...We're just friends. He's my neighbor and I'm close with his daughter. I'm gonna babysit his daughter whenever he needs me to, that's all. We're not romantically attracted to each other. I swear, we're just friends. He requested me because we're friends, he talked to me because we're friends, he drove me home because we're friends and he helped me carry paint into my house because we're friends. We're FRIENDS, guys. Do you know what a friend is?"

"HE DROVE YOU HOME?! DEAR GOD, JO HE WANTS YOU!" Luke stands up and clamps his hand over his mouth like he can't believe it. "Why don't you see it?!"

I take my face out of my hands and stomp my foot. "Because that's not the case! It was raining and we LITERALLY live right down the street from one another. He just gave me a ride home and helped me carry my things. We're just friends. It's his daughter that we bond over, guys. She likes me and I offered to babysit her every now and again. Please believe that we're just friends. We're just _friends,_ guys. I'm not interested in Alex like that. I'm not sexually attracted to him and he's not sexually attracted to me." I bite my lip and crinkle my nose. "I can't even think of Alex like that. He's my friend. It's weird to think of him like that. I'm not sexually attracted to him—or anyone, for that matter. I don't do sex."

"You're a virgin?" Macy raises her eyebrow and pries a little. I nod my head and keep a very straight face. "...No you're not. You can't be. You're entirely too pretty to be a virgin. Someone smashed that." I shake my head. "You're seriously a virgin, Jo?!" I nod. "Oh my god, we so have to get you laid!"

"...I'm not a virgin, guys." I smirk and shake my head. Macy glares at me with the "I knew it" look. "But I'm really not attracted to Alex, romantically or sexually." I lean against the counter and rest my chin the palms of my hands. "...I'm not a virgin, but I haven't had sex in so long, I think my virginity came back." Everyone starts laughing at me and I don't even know why because I'm being dead serious. I haven't had sex in such a long time. I haven't had sex since...crap...I don't even know. I think the last time I had sex was when Mark got elected chairman of the city, which was like...I don't know...ten months ago? It's been a while. "I'm serious guys...I like...lost my virginity...but now it's been so long since I've had sex...and my virginity found me. I didn't find it, it found me. As far as I'm concerned, I'm a virgin."

"You're a mess, Jo." Lucille wraps her arms around my shoulders and squeezes me. "You're such a mess. Here I thought you were all sweet and innocent and quiet..." She presses her lips to the side of my head. "Boy, was I wrong. You're a mess."

"I love you Jo." Macy rolls her eyes at me. "...And just leave it to us. We'll get you laid...and it'll be by that one sexy man. Trust me." She combs her fingers through my hair and pats my cheek. "You know what, Jo...you're really pretty." She tilts her head and looks at me, as if she's just now realizing that I'm pretty. For some reason, since she said that, I'm finding it hard to look her in her eye. People call me pretty all the time, it's really not that big of a deal. And when I look at myself in the mirror, sometimes I think I'm pretty too. But I don't want to seem cocky or conceited when someone calls me pretty so usually, I either say "thank you" or just put my head down. I've seen prettier people than me, to be honest. "I'm serious. You're like...freakishly pretty. Why the hell are you single?" She's messing with my hair like she's trying to get it to lie down right. "If I were a guy, I'd date you."

I open my mouth to say something and close it just as quickly as I opened it once I think twice about what I was going to say. I don't want them to judge me and I really don't want them to ask questions...but they're my friends, right? I mean...they're really my friends. And I know about them... I know that Lucille is married and she has two kids, a boy and a girl, that live in Orlando. Kaylee has a boyfriend named Brian and she's currently in college to become a nurse. She's working here for the summer. Macy has a boyfriend named Ryan and the two of them are supposed to get married sometime this fall. Luke has a boyfriend named Mike and as soon as it's legal in Florida, the two of them want to get married and adopt a couple kids from China. They don't know about me though. So should I tell them? I mean, want good is a one-sided friendship? "I was married once, actually." I know I swore that I wanted to keep my life in Chamberlain completely separate from my life here in Millerton but they're my friends and they deserve to know. "Back when I lived in Massachusetts...I was married."

"Are you serious?" Luke looks at me with the first serious look I've ever seen him give. "You were really married?"

"Mhm." I tuck my hair behind my ears and nod. "For five years. I got married when I was 23. I just turned 29 last month."

"But you're not married anymore?" Kaylee tilts her head. I shake mine. "What happened? Did he like...get abusive? Is that why you moved here? Or did you just like...mutually part ways?"

"...He died seven months ago." I feel my throat start to close up as soon as the worlds roll off my tongue. I don't think I've ever said that aloud. Saying it aloud is really...surreal. I inhale a sharp breath and find a speck on the counter to concentrate on so I don't cry. I can't believe I said that. More so than that, I can't believe I've never said that. Somehow, saying it aloud makes it all the more real. "It was a car accident..." I whisper that last bit but I know it was loud enough for them to hear me. I take my eyes off the speck on the counter and look at my friends again. They're all giving me that look I so desperately tried to get away from. They pity me. They're looking at me like I'm a sad little hopeless case. Except for Lucille. She's looking at me like she just cracked some kind of mystery code. And that's when it dawns on me... I look away from her and brush my teeth along my tongue. I told her that I was in a car accident. She knows that I was in an accident...and she probably put two and two together. "I'll see you guys later." Without any other words, I open the gate and hurry out from behind the counter. I hear someone call after me but I don't look back to see who exactly it was and I couldn't make out the voice since my hearing is just so...fuzzy all of a sudden.

I push open the door and jog down the front steps. It's raining but it's not hard enough for me to need a ride home. It's just sprinkling raining out here, just barely even a mist. As I walk hastily up the sidewalk, I untie my jacket from around my waist and shrug it on. I pop the hood over my head, sling my hands down into the pockets and keep my head down while I'm on my way home. I talk too much sometimes. I should've just left it at "he died seven months ago". I didn't have to go into detail and admit that it was a car accident that killed him. I didn't have to tell them that. I didn't have to lead Lucille to figure out the truth about me. I guess maybe I said the car accident part is because a part of me needed to hear myself say it. I don't think I've ever once admitted it to myself. I read the death certificate over and over again for a week. Saw the death date, the cause of death...everything. When it said that he died on November 22nd of 2014, it felt real to me. When it said that the cause of his death was blunt force trauma to his head and neck, it felt real then too. It felt real when I saw him in the casket with a bandage over his head, felt real when they lowered his casket in the ground, felt real when I went home and slept in an empty bed. But somehow and for some reason, _saying_ it makes it seem more real, if that's possible. I wish I had shut up after I told everybody that he died. If I had, I wouldn't be stuck walking, thinking about the car crash that caused my husband's death.

I walk past the parking lot of the convenience store and close my eyes since it's just a straight path. I'm trying so hard to force the thoughts of him out of my damn head but I just can't. I'm feeling like I felt that day in the restaurant owner's office. Like I'm about to have an attack of my overactive imagination and imagine something so real, yet so untrue. But I know it's not that. I'm about to have an attack of a memory and I really don't want to. I wish it would just go away. I wish I didn't have to think about this...not right now.

" _Mark? Mark? Mark! Mark, answer me!" I screamed as loud as I could but there was still this part of me that couldn't help but think that I wasn't screaming loud enough. He wasn't answering so he couldn't hear me, right? That's the only reason he wouldn't answer me. "Mark? Baby, can you answer me?" I tried moving my arm to see if I could nudge him or anything...but my arm wouldn't move. I remember thinking...I think my arm is broken. I turned my head to my right...He's still in the passenger's side but his eyes are closed and his head...dear god, why is his head like that? Why is his head like that?_

His head was...not like a head at all. It was so caved in and half of it was gone...half of his HEAD was gone. I put my hand over my chest and push on it. I don't think I can breathe. I think...I think I'm dying? I can't breathe. My heart is beating entirely too fast. I stop walking right in the middle of the sidewalk and hunch over. I put my hands on my knees and try to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. I can't breathe. My chest hurts. It feels like I have a 50 pound weight sitting on my chest and it's crushing my windpipe. It's cutting off my air supply. I can't breathe. I gasp, taking in a multiple breaths at one time. I can't breathe though...something's wrong with me. Why can't I breathe? I close my eyes and really try to concentrate on breathing. What if I really am a murderer after all? Because I'm not stupid and that's the only other option, right? I'm not stupid and I know that drinking and driving is wrong. So maybe I am a murderer...because I'm not stupid. I can't breathe...but murderers don't deserve to breathe.

I take a couple deep breaths again and finally, I feel my chest loosening up a bit. I don't know why I'm breathing when I'm a crummy murderer that doesn't deserve to breathe, but I'm breathing again nonetheless. I straighten myself up tilt my head back at the sky and gaze at the moon for a moment. Thank god it's dark outside so nobody saw me break down, thank god it's not pouring down rain and thank god I don't work tomorrow...because I have no idea how I would face my friends if I worked immediately after this day.

 **X X X**

I don't know if I've ever heard of anyone getting high off paint fumes, but if it's possible, I should be well above sea-level. I've been awake since 8:30 this morning, painting my kitchen and huffing paint and I'm either lightheaded from the fumes or just hungry since I haven't had breakfast or lunch yet. I don't know why I got up so early this morning when I usually sleep well past noon on my off days but something internal just wouldn't let me sleep past 8:30. I had a terrible night's sleep last night to begin with. I was stuck thinking about how I broke down on my way home from work last night. I'm fine now...I guess the guilt and shame wore off but during the night, I tossed and turned just thinking about it. I fell asleep for a little while around 6:00 but when I woke up at 8:30, I just couldn't go back to sleep. So I went to my kitchen, cracked open the can of paint and decided to try and finish my kitchen this morning. I've been painting for four hours and I'm still not done yet. I started painting two days ago, when Alex got the paint for me but I got the wall next to my fridge done and I quit after that. I worked yesterday so I didn't have time to paint but I'm off today and I think I might spend the entire day painting. I'm off tomorrow too because I've worked every day for the last week and since I'm still part-time, they can't let me work over 40 hours if it's not approved overtime. I'd rather just be off than get the overtime approved by Tony. I'm off today and I'll probably finish my kitchen at least and by the end of tomorrow, I'd like to have my bathroom done as well.

I dip the brush into the paint tray and crawl over next to my stove so I can paint the baseboard. The cable guy is supposed to be coming today, between the hours of 10 and 2. It's quarter past noon so he could be here any minute. I think I picked a nice blue for my kitchen. It's like a baby blue kind of color but it's more pastel than a baby blue. It's really nice and I was right about needing some color in here. My house is looking better already and my kitchen is only halfway done. When I was lying awake in my bed last night, I just kept thinking about how much of a coward I am. I ran...and that's all I really know how to do. I ran from Chamberlain when things got hard and I'm trying to rebuild my life here in Millerton. I keep thinking that I'm happy here and in a sense, there are some parts of me that are indeed, happy here. But I don't know who I'm trying to fool. Truth is, I'm still a little depressed. The only thing I've ever been good at though, is bottling my feelings and pushing them aside. I don't really know how to deal with feelings, now that I think about it.

Part of me is happy that I can live in a place where people don't hate me. I'm glad that I can walk down the street without being harassed, stared at and picked on. I'm glad that I don't have to worry about the house I own being foreclosed around me and I'm trying to put Mark behind. But the bigger half of me knows that I'm only trying to run from my problems and eventually, they're gonna catch up. Moving isn't going to change the fact that I killed my husband in a car crash because I was too damn stupid to just not drive while I was drunk. Moving isn't going to fix the fact that my legs are screwed up. Moving isn't going to change the fact that I loved my husband with everything in my body and he's gone. And moving surely isn't going to change the fact that I could've had a piece of him forever with me. I could've had a piece of my husband but I don't and that's my fault and I'm still not ready to talk about that. See, that's just what I do. I push my feelings aside when I don't feel like/don't know how to deal with them. I think the scariest part of that is the fact that I know...I know for a fact...that when I'm least expecting it and when I _certainly_ don't want them to...my feelings are gonna just hit me like a ton of bricks and I'm not gonna know what to do with myself. I'm just going to be a big mess of emotions but that's just a risk I'm going to have to take because pushing my emotions aside for a later time is just something I do.

I lick my lips and get eye-level with the part of the baseboard I'm painting. I want the paint job to look neat, so I'm concentrating on every single crack and crevice. I'm just about to finish painting the corner where the baseboard folds in when suddenly, it sounds like someone is smacking—not knocking—smacking on my door frantically and I jump back, practically out of my skin and gasp. That scared the shit out of me. I take a few deep breaths to relax myself and put the paint brush in the paint tray. I guess it's the cable man. But why would he be smacking on the door instead of knocking? Or ringing my doorbell? I pick myself up off the ground and saunter over to my door.

I open it up.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"You want peanut butter and jelly or peanut butter and banana?" I grab the jar of crunchy peanut butter out of the cupboard and the loaf of bread. It's noon so I'm about to feed her something for lunch. After she eats lunch, she should be ready to take a nap. I worked midnight last night so I'm looking forward to her taking a nap because I need a damn nap myself. I didn't get home until 7:30 this morning and I didn't go to sleep at all. I got in the shower when I came home from work and came down to the kitchen to heat myself up one of the pork chops I fried for dinner last night. After I showered and ate, I planned on going to sleep but Lyla had other plans. My dad watched her here instead of at his house and she slept on the couch with him last night so I was going to bring her upstairs in the bed with me. As soon as I touched her, she woke up and thought it was party time. I haven't been to sleep since I got home and I'm exhausted. "Lyla Isabella, I'm talking to you." I lean back and look into the living room. She's sitting on the couch wearing a pink t-shirt and a pair of purple pajama pants. She turns her head and looks at me. "I said peanut butter and jelly or peanut butter and banana...answer me."

"Um...nana." She turns her attention back to the TV and ignores me. She's been really ornery today too, but I suppose her behavior is somewhat normal for a three year old that'll be four in a couple of weeks. I caught her trying to stick a lollipop stick into the electric socket and when I told her no, she just looked at me. I turned my back and she did it again so I took the stick off of her and smacked her hands. She cried, of course and I felt really bad but she was going to electrocute herself. I sat her on the couch and made her watch TV. And then, as if she didn't learn her lesson the first time, she started jumping on the couch. I told her to sit down and she ignored me. I told her to sit down again, she still ignored me so I grabbed her, swatted her on the butt and made her sit in timeout. She's never this ornery so I don't know what the hell is wrong with her but when I let her off timeout, I told her if she didn't sit down and behave that I was going to crack her butt again and she sat down and watched TV. She's taking a nap after she eats, regardless if she wants to or not.

"Come in here and eat, Lyla." I cut her peanut butter and banana sandwich into fours and put the plate on the kitchen table. She comes running into the kitchen. "Don't run." I pick her up and sit her in the chair. I work from 3-11 tomorrow, which means she's gonna be spending the day at the shop with my dad. When I work 7-3 or 11-7, she doesn't have to go to the shop because from 7-3, my dad's morning is just getting started and at 11-7, his day is over. The only time she has to stay at the shop is when I work 3-11 because from 3:00 to 11:00, those are his work hours. He's at the shop from 3:30-8 every day. She picks up a quadrant of her sandwich and takes a bite. "Dada..." She turns around in her chair and faces me. "Hey dada... Pappy snore...him go...him go..." She starts snorting. "Like that, dada! Him sound like a piggy!"

"Really?" I walk over to where she's sitting. She's really on my nerves today with how belligerent and naughty she's being but no matter what, I always love this little girl. I bend down slightly and kiss the top of her head. "Pappy always snores." I rub her hair as she eats her sandwich. "We're gonna take a nap when you're done eating. Just me and you, we're gonna take a nap. You want to go night-night on the couch or upstairs in the big bed?"

"Big bed." She finishes off one piece of sandwich and starts on another. "I go wiff Pappy tomorrow too dada?"

"Yeah, you gotta go down to the shop with Pappy tomorrow." I take my hands off her head and go over to the cupboard so I can get her something to drink. I take out her pink sippy cup and put it on the counter. I've been thinking about Jo a lot lately. Not about her in a weird kind of way, but about her in the way that I think I might really like for her to watch Lyla sometime. She's probably the only person outside of family that I've ever seen Lyla open up to, so that's a plus. And I'd rather have Lyla in a house than in a car shop. I have her number...we exchanged numbers after she offered to babysit for me. I just haven't mustered up the courage or whatever to call her. I just don't want to inconvenience her. She has her own job and her own life to live and I don't want to call her, ask her to babysit for me and have her feel obligated. I would be fine with her watching Lyla, I trust that Ly would be in good hands with her. I just don't feel right asking such a big favor of her. I knew she would be good with Lyla the second I saw the way she held her in my dad's shop. She held Lyla like she has kids of her own and when we got in the car to go home, she sat in the back with Lyla and let her sleep on her lap. She's really good with Lyla and plus, Lyla likes her. If there's anyone on this block that I'd trust with my kid, it'd be her. I bring her cup back over to her so she can have something to drink and as soon as I put her cup down, there's a knock at my door. "Eat up, Ly...I'm gonna grab the door."

I walk to my front door, trying to think of who this could be. It could be my one neighbor bringing me a bag of cucumbers and tomatoes from her garden like she always does. This is around the time she usually brings them to me. I unlock the door and pull it open...and I immediately wish I hadn't. My mom is standing on my porch. My freaking mom. She's wearing a pair of jeans and a loose-fitting sweater and she's carrying a shopping bag. I don't open the door any further though. She's not welcomed in my house. "Good afternoon, Alex." She nudges her glasses up on her nose with her index finger. "Are you going to invite me in or do you want me to sit out here in this heat and melt to death?" She snaps at me. I'd rather see her melt to be totally honest. But because she's my mother...and ONLY because she's my mother, I step aside and let her in. I don't say anything to her though. She rubs her hands together as I shut the door and smiles. "Where's my little Lyla bug?" She starts walking toward my kitchen but I stand in front of her to stop her.

"What are you doing here, mom?" I hold my arm out and block her entrance to the kitchen. I said she can't see Lyla and that's what I meant. She will NEVER see my daughter again, as long as I have anything to do with it. She might see us out at a grocery store...or she might see her while she's over my dad's. But she cannot and WILL not walk into my house and see her. I refuse. "What do you want?"

"Oh, Alex...step aside and let me see my grandbaby. You're not still angry with me, are you?" She folds her arms across her chest and taps her foot. "Alexander, you have to understand that as a grandmother, I have a duty to my grandbaby to protect her at all costs. If I see something that I don't think is right, I'm going to step in and say something. You cannot be mad at me for that."

"Bullshit, mom. I'm her father, you don't have to protect her from ME. I'm her father...and I don't appreciate you treating me like I'm some kind of criminal. Mom, you're not welcomed in my house. You're not welcomed here, you're not welcomed to see my daughter, you're not welcomed around me ever. You burned that bridge completely down, mom." I shake my head at her. "You have any idea how much that hurts? How much sleep I lost just...thinking about the fact that you would actually believe that I would hit my daughter? Hurt my daughter? Touch my daughter? _Molest_ my daughter? Mom, I can't even...stomach the thought of ANYONE hurting her, let alone myself. And you planted that doubt...you...actually think that I would. You actually think that you NEED to protect her from me. I'm her father, ma. If nobody else is gonna be good to her, I'm going to. So I'm sorry, but you have to go...get out." I shake my head again. "You're no mother of mine. You're dead to me."

"Alexander Michael Karev. You yourself know that a FALL could not have done that to that baby's eye. You're a pediatrician and you really think for one second that a fall could cause that baby's eye to look like a grown man punched her?" She's angry. I grew up with my mom for 30 years, I know when she's mad...and she is LIVID. "And the fact that you feel the need to wipe her constantly while changing her...Alex there's something about that that didn't set right with me. I could be wrong...I could be wrong about all of this. But as her grandmother, I'm not going to sit around and watch her be hurt when her dad wasn't equipped to take care of her in the first place! You never were ready to handle her! You should've given her to me in the first place, just like I asked you to when Jenna died! If you can't handle her, you need to give her to someone that can! Now as YOUR MOTHER, I'm telling you to move and let me see my granddaughter."

"And as her father, I'm telling you to get the HELL out of my house." I stand firm. I'm not letting her see Lyla. "Don't you think she's been through enough?! She's three years old and she lost her mother! Now you're trying to take her away from me too?! Come on, mom...let it GO. Just leave. Trust and believe that whatever I do with my daughter, she's WELL taken care of and she is LOVED. I'm not hurting her and she's fine with me. I can handle her, ma. I'm handling her. GET out of my house." I point towards the door. "...You know what, mom? You try to make it seem like all you're out for is the best interest of Lyla but if you really cared about what's best for her, you'd know that leaving her here is what's best for her. And if you knew me at all...you'd know that you didn't raise a child molester, a child abuser..." I can't even look at her. "It's like you didn't raise me at all." I shake my head again because truly, that's all I can do is shake my head at her. I have no words for her. "I shouldn't have to stand here and convince you that I didn't abuse my child."

"Alex, move...now. I'm not kidding. I have something here in this bag that I bought specifically for her and I want to give it to her." If I didn't know any better, I'd say she was going to hit me. I'd say that she's gonna raise her hand and slap me in my face. It's fine if she does...wouldn't be the first time my mom hit me. And if she does hit me, it's not gonna change the fact that she still can't see my daughter. I still stand with my arm blocking the entrance. She lifts her hand and pushes my arm down. "MOVE."

"NO. GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, HELEN." I swat her hand away. "YOU CAN SIT HERE AND YELL AT ME UNTIL YOU'RE BLUE IN THE FACE BUT I'M STILL NOT GONNA LET YOU S-" Just like I thought she would, she raises her hand and slaps me pretty hard, dead across my face. As soon as she slaps me and my head goes barreling to the side, I hear Lyla scream, "DADDY!" I didn't even realize she was watching. I really want to hit my mom back. She hit me in front of my kid...as if accusing me of hurting her isn't enough, she hit me in front of her too? I grit my teeth and just keep telling myself that she's my mother...she's my mother...she gave birth to me. My cheek stings like hell. I see Lyla from the corner of my eye. Her hands are over her eyes and she's cowering away from the situation. "...You need to go, mom. You need to go right now. You need to get out of my house...before I call the police." I mumble that last part. There's only but so much disrespect I can take from her. I'm trying to be respectful because as a man, I was always taught that I need to respect my mother. But it's getting so hard. "Go, mom...now."

She kneels down on the ground. "Come here, Lyla...come here sweetheart."

"MOM, GET OUT!"

She completely ignores me. "Come here, sweetheart...come see grammy..."

"Lyla, if you move...I swear to god, you're not allowed to play with your Barbies for a week." I say to her through clenched teeth. I would never follow through with that punishment, by the way. I would never penalize her for my mom being a bitch, I just need an incentive to keep her behind me and not in my mom's arms. She's three years old...she's a baby. If she sees my mom calling her, she's gonna go to her. My mom is still coaxing her over to her. Lyla takes a step toward my mom. "TWO weeks, Lyla...no Barbies." She stops and looks at me. "Stay right there." I say to her.

"Come see grammy, honey..." My mom is still trying to get her to come to her.

Beside me, Lyla moves...but she doesn't go to my mom. Instead, she runs away from the entire situation as fast as her little legs will take her. She runs back toward the kitchen and heads in the direction of the back door. She's probably going to the laundry room...she hides there sometimes when things become too much for her. She hid in the laundry room at the after service of Jenna's funeral before she made her way to Jenna's closet. That's my girl, though. As long as she doesn't go to my mom, I don't care where she goes. "Mom, you really need to get out of my house. You're not helping your case here...I was going to consider letting you see her again but...you're really not helping here."

I want to go comfort my daughter.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I open up my door to greet the cable guy when I see that it's not the cable guy at all. It's a barefoot three year old, dressed in a pink shirt and purple pants with tears streaking all down her cheeks. That explains the smacking instead of knocking, I guess.


	15. Thank You

"Lyla?" I open my door up all the way and kneel down so I'm eye-level with her instead of towering over her. It goes without saying that she was the last person I was expecting when I opened up my door. I admit that due to the smacking on my door instead of knocking, I didn't fully expect to open up to the cable guy. Cable guys are professional...he would have at least rang the doorbell if he didn't knock, so the smacking led me to believe that I wasn't really going to open up and find the cable guy. But I certainly didn't think that I was going to open up and find a barefoot three year old with tears pouring down her cheeks. "Lyla...what are you doing here?" I try to keep the tone of my voice as calm as I possibly can but I'm struggling. I'm freaking out a little bit right now. I have no idea why this little girl is on my doorstep and more importantly, I have no idea why she's bawling her eyes out like this. "Look at me honey, are you hurt?" I cradle her face in my hands and force her to look me in my eye. She snatches away from me and looks down at the ground again. "Does your daddy know you're here?" She hiccups from crying so hard and rubs her eyes. "...Come here." I stand up straight and pick her up. I shut my door behind us and carry her to my kitchen counter. "Why are you here, Lyla? What happened?"

"Doe..." She rubs her eyes really hard and sniffles. I grab her arm and gently twist it just to check and see if she's hurt. "Doe...I libb here wiff you...kay?" Her arm checks out fine so I check her other one. Still nothing. She's wearing a baggy pink t-shirt with her name spray painted on the front. It's one of those t-shirts you would get made at an amusement park. Her pajama pants are purple with little yellow princess crowns all over them and she has a pair of white—or used to be white—socks on. Her socks are filthy, probably from the fact that she walked down here barefoot. Her long brown hair is tied back in a ponytail but her bangs are sticking to her cheeks by her tears. "I wanna libb here...can I libb here?" She's rubbing her eyes really hard and hiccuping. Thank god she's not hurt and thank god she decided to come here, of all places she could've ran away to. I don't really want to have her in here around all these paint fumes though. "Pease Doe? Pease?"

"As much as I would like for you to live with me Lyla..." I brush her wet hair away from her face and pick her back up again. "You have to go home..." When I tell her that she has to go home, she starts crying even harder and to my immense surprise, she throws her arms around my neck and squeezes me so hard that it chokes me a little bit. "Oh..." I whisper to myself. "It's okay...it's okay sweetheart." I rub her back and support her weight with one arm underneath her butt. She wraps her legs around my waist and lies on my shoulder. Granted...I've only seen her about three or four times before but I think I'm justified when I say that she's acting really strange. I've never seen her act this way before. She's usually very standoffish towards me, not really wanting me to touch her and not really sure if she even wants to speak to me. But today, she's throwing her arms around me and lying on my shoulder and asking me if she can live with me. "It's okay Lyla..." I rub her back and sway from side to side with her to calm her down. It sounds like she stopped crying but I don't want to move to turn my head and look. I quietly walk over to the counter next to my fridge and pick up my cell phone.

I'm really not sure if she's silent just because she stopped crying or if she's silent because she's sleeping so I take my chances by turning my head and looking. I look down at where she's laying on my shoulder. Her eyes are closed and her thumb is in her mouth. Her breathing is slow and very steady and she's absolutely motionless. I guess running here and crying her eyes out too a lot of energy out of her. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that Alex doesn't know she left the house and came here. If he does know, then something is seriously wrong with him as a parent. He doesn't strike me as the type that could care less about what his three year old is doing so yeah, I don't think he knows. I run my thumb along the smooth metal that is my cell phone sigh. I know calling Alex is the right thing to do but I just had a thought. What would I do if she actually was my baby? I'd let her sleep on me like she is right now. I'd rub her back and kiss her cheek and hold her for as long as she'd let me. I'd probably sit down on the couch and stare at her, just thinking about how cute and perfect she is. I wish she was baby. I want...to just stay here alone with her. I feel like a child wanting to play house with a baby that isn't even mine. I just never realized how much I could enjoy having a baby. I sigh. I'm so pathetic. I unlock my phone and go straight to my contacts. I tap on his name and hold the phone to my ear.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Lyla?!" I snatch open her bedroom door and look around. Her pink Disney princess bed is still perfectly made, the toys are untouched from when I put them away yesterday and there is no sign of her in here anywhere. "LYLA, THIS ISN'T FUNNY!" I get down on my hands and knees and look underneath her bed. She's not there. I stand back up and dart over to her closet. I tear it open and she's not in here either. "LYLA!" I run across the hall to my bedroom and look around. No sign of her in here. I look under my bed. No sign of her there either. "LYLA ISABELLA KAREV, I'M NOT EVEN JOKING!" I run down the steps and bust open the back door. I look out in the backyard for her. She's not in the jungle gym, she's not swinging on the swingset, her pink and black battery-powered Volkswagen Beetle is parked next to the swingset like it always is. I was panicking when I looked in the laundry room after my mom finally dragged her ass out of my house and Lyla wasn't there. I thought for sure she'd be in the laundry room because she always is whenever things get to be overwhelming for her. I'm way past panicking now. I'm sick to my stomach. I stand on the porch, just looking. "...Lyla!" I wipe the sweat off my forehead and try to choke back vomit.

She's clearly not in this house and that makes me sick. She's three years old! She's a baby! It took me ten...maybe fifteen minutes _after_ Lyla ran off for my mom to leave. That means she's been gone out of this house for fifteen minutes. Fifteen fucking minutes my three year old has been out of this house. She could be ANYWHERE in Millerton by now. She's little, she's a baby and for god's sake, she's beautiful. You know how many sickos could've picked her up? Sex offenders, child molesters looking for a little girl to abuse...people that can't have kids of their own see a beautiful little baby walking down the street and snatch her up. Just sick people...all the possible things that could've happened to her. She could've been hit by a car! Jesus Christ. Alright, I need to think. Where could she be? I bury my face in my hands and close my eyes. I don't know where she could be! I grip a handful of my hair. "Fuck!" The garbage can takes the brunt of my anger with a swift kick.

I storm back inside the house and go for my cell phone. It's time for me to call the police. I looked everywhere in this goddamn house for her. I looked in the laundry room. I looked in the washer, in the dryer, in the laundry baskets, underneath the beds, in the bathtub, in all closets including Jenna's, in all the cupboards and even outside in both yards. I can't find her. She's not in this house and I have to throw up. I call my dad first. I don't want to go to the extreme of reporting her missing just yet. I know I probably should, but something about reporting my baby missing is just so scary to me. "Yeah, dad...listen...have you seen Lyla? Yeah, mom came over here...me and her got into it in front of Lyla and mom hit me and I think it freaked her out a little bit and she's gone. I can't find her...I can't find her anywhere, dad..." I rest my head against a wall and I just lose it. "I don't know where she could be..." My knees go weak from blubbering like a baby. "You gotta come help me find her, pop...I don't know where she is...and do me a favor...please don't tell mom I lost her..." My tears are puddling on the countertop. "Alright, alright...thanks, pop." I hang up the phone and wipe my eyes. He said he's gonna call my mom and see if he can innocently pry around to find out if maybe she took her somehow. He promised he wouldn't make me look like a negligent father. If he can't get any information out of my mom, he's gonna call me and tell me he was unsuccessful and he's gonna come over here and help me look for her and stuff.

I'm probably never gonna get her back. I see movies, newscasts and TV shows about this kind of stuff all the time. Little girls like Lyla go missing and they're never heard from again until weeks later when they're pulling their bodies out of a river or something. I'm never gonna see my baby girl again. Why'd my mom have to hit me? Or better yet, why didn't I immediately run after her? I just figured she was going to the laundry room because she always goes to the laundry room. I heard the way she screamed my name after my mom slapped me. She was scared to death. And the way she kept cowering away from my mom after she did it. And her little hands were clamped over her eyes and she was crying when she was confused. God, I should've just gone after her. I didn't even know that she knew how to open doors. ...She doesn't know how to open doors. She can't reach the lock. But we have a doggy door in the back. Why do we even have that fucking door? We don't have a dog! She went out through the door. Did I make her run?

My mom was right all along. I'm not fit to be a dad. I lost my daughter. I lost my wife and now my kid. I put my head down against the counter and try to think better. I try to convince myself that Lyla's just across the street at Mrs. Jensen's, petting Gibby on his head or something. She's fine. She's just over there and she decided to go over there until my mom left. She's okay. She'll be home soon and when she comes home, I'll hold her and kiss her and she'll never run away again because I'll never let her out of my sight. She's okay. She has to be okay. If...If Lyla's not okay, I don't know if I will be. She's the only reason I keep going. She's my motivation to get my ass up out of bed in the morning. If she's gone...what more do I have to live for? I can only imagine what Jen is thinking up there in heaven right now. She's probably calling me a bunch of stupid bastards...I deserve that. I lost our three year old baby. I'm trying to convince myself that it's going to be okay but it probably won't be. She's gone. My knees are weak again and instead of holding myself up, I just let myself fall to the floor. I just want to curl up in a ball and die. I pull my knees up into my chest and cover my face with my hands. Before I know ut, the only sound in the kitchen is the sound of my sobs.

Up on the counter, my phone starts buzzing like crazy. I know it's my dad calling me and he could either say one of two things...and both options are horrible. He can either tell me that my mom has no knowledge of where Lyla could be, which would mean that my baby is truly gone. Or he could tell me that my mom has her, which is equally as terrifying. I sniff and reach up. I snag my phone off the counter and glance at the caller ID. It's not my dad at all...and I don't know how I feel about that fact. I was kind of hoping to hear something from him. I slide my thumb across the screen to answer it and put it to my ear. "Not now, Jo...I'm taking care of something..." I try to sound as polite and as calm as I possibly can. I don't know why she's calling me but I don't have time to talk to her right now. I don't want to tie up the line in case my dad calls me with an update. "What? What?"

I pick myself up off the floor and grab my car keys.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"Lyla..." She's sleeping and she's been asleep for a while now but there's something about me that just likes saying her name. I don't want to put her down. I took her to my bedroom and sat down on my bed with her in my arms. I adjusted her position...I'm holding her in my arms like a baby and as I've been staring down at her, I've been realizing how gorgeous she really is. Her eyebrows are perfectly shaped, her little nose is knobby and she has plump, pink lips to accompany her adorably chubby cheeks. Her mouth is gaped open, showing her tiny spaced-apart teeth and she's resting comfortably in my arms. She doesn't need to move...she's perfectly fine where she is, in my arms. If I could, I'd shower her in a bunch of kisses. I wish she was my baby. I wish I _had_ my baby. "Lylaaaa..." I sift my fingers through her bangs. When I was younger and my mom used to take me to the playground, she could always tell my cry from every other child's on the playground. I'd fall down and skin my knee and cry for her and she immediately came running. She just knew it was me crying...and that always amazed me. I asked her how she knew once. I asked her how she just automatically knew that I was me crying and she told me that it was her "mommy power". She said that all women are born with their mommy power but it kicks in at different times for different women. She said that whenever a baby is in a mommy's belly, the woman's mommy power starts to develop. I didn't know what she meant back then but I think I know now. I think I feel my own "mommy power" sitting here holding Lyla. She's not even my baby and I feel all these warm, caring feelings just shooting through my entire body. I can only imagine what I would've been like if I had my own.

"Sweet dreams, honey...sweet dreams." I nestle my finger in the palm of her hand and stroke her fingertips. I don't think I love her. I think this is just me, feeling the empty space that my own baby left in my heart the night of the accident. Just knowing that I was supposed to have my own is tearing me apart on the inside, but holding someone else's helps heal that...just for a little while. I always have had a soft spot in my heart for little children but I think losing my own child just made that spot more vulnerable. Interrupting this tender moment is a hard, loud knock at my front door. "That's probably your dad...yep." I secure her close against my body and stand up from my air mattress. I walk slowly to my front door so I don't wake her and carefully open it. Sure enough, Alex is standing on my porch. His eyes are bloodshot and red-rimmed, his hair is wild and unruly and he looks like he's been through it. The left side of his face is swollen and I see blood dripping from the corner of his eye but I try not to focus on that. I don't want to make it seem like I'm staring. "Here, she's right here...she's safe."

"Oh my god..." He immediately takes Lyla from my arms and holds her tight against his own chest. "Oh my god..." If I didn't know any better, I'd say he's about to cry. "I was so worried about you." He puts one hand in the middle of her back and the other on the back of her head and snuggles with her. Lyla's eyelashes are fluttering as she's opening her eyes and she looks sort of angry, probably because she's been woken up from a deep sleep. "I was so worried about you, little girl." He smashes his lips against her cheek and starts petting her hair downward. "Oh thank god you're alright..."

"Daddy?" She lifts her head and calls out in a groggy voice.

"Yeah, it's daddy sweetie...It's daddy." He kisses her on the lips now. "What were you thinking, Ly? Huh?" He holds her outward so he can look her in the eye. "You don't leave the house without me! You don't just run away when you feel like it! What...what were you thinking?!" He's yelling at her but I know his anger is out of love for her, not out of hatred or frustration. "Don't you ever do that again! You hear me?! Don't you ever do that again!"

"Sorry daddy..." She pokes her lip out. "I sorry..."

"You scared me, Ly..." He squeezes her tight and sniffs. I'm surprised he didn't cry. With the way his voice was sounding and the way he was tearing up, I thought for sure that he was going to break down and cry. But he didn't and I suspect that it's because I'm standing here. My lips twist up into a toothless smile just looking at the two of them. They look so sweet together. "...Thank you, Jo." He looks at me and shakes his head. "Thank you so, so much for taking care of her." I just nod my head. "No, you don't understand...I was so worried about her. I didn't even know she left. She...she was there one second and the next..." He closes his eyes. "I looked everywhere for her and I really thought she was gone. I didn't even know she'd think to come here... I can't thank you enough."

"It's no problem, really...I was just painting and I heard a knock on the door. It's fine, I enjoyed having her." I tuck my hair behind my ears. "I didn't think you knew she left...I couldn't imagine you letting her out of your sight, let alone letting her walk down the street by herself. I figured she ran away...that's why I thought to call you." I just stare at her. She's laying on his shoulder now and attempting to go back to sleep. "She's a good baby, don't be too hard on her. I know what it's like to want to run away..." He nods his head at me and rubs her hair. "...What... _was_ she running away from?" I tilt my head. I suspect the blood on his face has something to do with why she ran away from home. He shrugs and shakes his head at the same time. I bite my lip and swallow hard. "...There's an air mattress in my bedroom...in the back. She can lie down there...and you can sit here if you need to. I don't have...a couch or a kitchen table...or chairs, for that matter but..." I shrug. "I can help."

"Thanks Jo, but I think I'm gonna take her home now...I just kind of want to be alone with her right now." He politely declines my offer.

"Give her here, Alex." I hold my arms out for Lyla and he doesn't budge. "Look who's being the stubborn one now." I mumble. He rolls his eyes at me and hands her over. "You just wait right here, okay?" He nods and looks out the window. I slowly take sleeping Lyla back to my bedroom and lie her down on my bed. I stroke her cheek as a goodbye and head back toward the kitchen to Alex. "Look, I don't mean to keep you from spending alone time with your daughter, I swear that's not my intention...and I will let you go in a second." I open up the drawer next to my stove and take out a dishrag. "At least let me clean up that nasty cut on your face first." I soak the rag with lukewarm water from my kitchen sink and walk over to him. Since he's so much taller than me, I have to stand on my tiptoes. I gently dress the warm rag to the cut next to his eye and he winces. "Sorry...I know it stings." I scrape the rag along his skin to clean off the blood. "Is...everything okay? You don't really have to tell me...I just thought it'd be nice to ask."

He sighs. "My mom...came over." I nod and let the warm rag go. I turn his head to the side to assess the damage. His face is really swollen. I dab his eye. "...It's a long story, Jo." He shakes his head backs away from me.

"I have time." I take the rag away from his eye again and look at it. The blood is gone. It's just a small cut. "If you want to talk about it, that is." He just looks at me. He doesn't say anything, he just looks at me. I raise my eyebrows at him and he shrugs. I give him a soft, reassuring smile and sit right down in the middle of my kitchen floor. I rub the spot next to me and he sits down too. I offer him the rag and he takes it and presses it back to his face again.

"My mom came over. And I dunno...ever since..." He sighs. "Ever since my wife passed away...she's been trying to get Lyla from me. She thinks Lyla would be better off with her and I dunno...I mean, maybe she's right...but still." He won't look at me. He's looking straight forward at my fridge. "But...a couple weeks ago...Lyla was jumping on the couch and she fell off and smacked her face off the side of my coffee table. The bruises...It looked bad. It looked like she was punched but she hit her face, I swear to it. And I took her over my mom's house the next day so my mom could watch her while I went to work. And...my mom...she thought I hit her. I have a bad temper sometimes and my mom knows that so she originally thought I hit her. And that's when she started accusing me. Accusing me of hitting Lyla...touching her...in that way." He pulls the rag off and looks at the blood on the rag before he puts it back on his eye. "So I dunno...I just told my om that she couldn't see Lyla anymore. I don't appreciate being treated like a criminal by my own mother so I just told her to stay away. And she showed up at my house today...and we got into an argument and she hit me in front of Lyla...which is probably why she ran away. She was really freaked out by seeing my mom slap me like that..." He sighs and rolls his eyes. "Whatever, you know?"

"...That's the thing about mothers, I guess." I pull my legs up into my chest and rest my chin on my knees. Having my knees in my chest hurts my hips but it seems like the right position to sit and talk to him so I power through the pain. "They think they know you...and in a sense, they should considering the fact that they raised you...but when you're all grown up and the hell out of their house, you come to find out that they don't know you at all." I sigh too. "You would think that your mom would know she didn't raise a child abuser, right? Guess not." I put my tongue in my cheek. "That's a mother for you, though."

"Yeah, that's a mother. My mother, at least." He mumbles. The two of us spend the next few moments in silence, sitting next to each other and staring at the refrigerator. "...What's your mom like?" He breaks the silence.

"A pain in my ass." He holds his hands out nods his head as if he's agreeing with me. I can't deal with the pain anymore so I straighten out my legs and sit up straight. "No, but she's kind of a health nut. She's a Chemistry teacher...she worked in a lab before she became a teacher and she spent most of her days synthesizing...proteins and drugs and stuff so she learned a lot. She learned a lot about the crap that goes into your body and the effects it could have on your body so she was forever changed by that. And she was weird with me as a baby. She...made all my baby food organically, didn't believe in pesticides or processed food. She made my baby diapers out of cloth because there's carcinogens in manufactured baby diapers..." I shake my head. "The woman is nuts, but... that's my mom for you."

"She sounds nice. Like she cares about you enough to make your diapers out of cloth so you don't get cancer." He clears his throat and his comment makes me smile. I always used to think of my mom that way. Everyone in school used to think she was weird too because she would pack my lunches and my lunches always consisted of every single food group and everything she prepared herself. I always thought of it as she loved me enough to do those things for me. "Or she's just paranoid, whichever." He shrugs and that makes me laugh again. "Do you have kids, Jo?" He turns to me. I mumble a "huh-uh" and shake my head. "Baby brothers or sisters?" I shake again. "Oh." He mutters. "Just thought you did...you're really good with Lyla, so I just thought..."

"I just like kids." I shrug my shoulders. "I um...I always have, kind of. Ever since my senior year of college, I have. I student taught a group of first graders once and I loved it. I just have a soft spot in my heart for children."

"Student taught?" He raises his brow.

"Mhm." I nod my head. "I'm a teacher. I have a teaching certificate. I can teach anything from Kindergarten to 6th grade and from 7th grade on, I can only teach math classes. I have a master's degree in Statistics and two other bachelor's degrees in basic math." He raises his eyebrows as if he's impressed by me. "I wanted to be an Actuary when I first went to college. I like measuring out the 'what ifs' and the possibilities...I always thought that was fun. But eventually, I just decided to be a teacher...so I could deal with math and little kids. My two favorite things."

"So...teacher by day, waitress by night?" He tilts his head.

"Screw you." I stick my tongue out at him and laugh. "When I first moved here, I went to every school district around here and asked if they were hiring. I needed a job, jackass...Lobster Hut was the only place that was hiring."

"I'm not judging, I'm not judging." He shakes his head at me. "I actually have respect for teachers. My wife was one."

"Really? What'd she teach?"

"Psychology. She was a college professor, actually. A good one, too."

"That's neat." My hips are starting to hurt again even though I'm standing still so I lean forward and lie down on my stomach to take some pressure off of them. "I always liked Psychology." He nods when I say that and again, we're both silent for a little while. It's weird how I can sit here and talk to him like this. I feel like I've known him for forever. It's like I'm not even sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor with him. It doesn't matter where we're sitting, we're just talking like we're best friends and in a sense...maybe he is my best friend. I didn't have very many friends until I moved to Millerton. I have a bunch of friends now, it seems. I have Luke, Lucille, Macy, Kaylee and now Alex. It only seems fitting that I'd have a best friend while I'm here, right? I think that might be Alex. I never get tired of talking to him. "Hey Alex?" I write my full name out with my index finger on my hand. He says, "huh?" I erase my name with my palm and start writing my last name. "...How did your wife pass?" I look up at him. His face is completely blank and it's not until now that I realize his cut started bleeding again. His mom must've slapped the hell out of him. "You don't have to tell me." I shake my head. I can see that I've struck a nerve. "Sorry I asked."

He twists the bloody dishrag around and around in his hand and clenches his jaw. "Why are you here, Jo?" He ignores my question and I can't say I'm surprised. He reminds me a lot of myself that way. I deflect questions I don't want to answer too. But I don't usually deflect questions and ask the other person questions that are ten times harder than the question I asked. I clench my own jaw and wrinkle my eyebrows. "There's gotta be a reason, right? Someone just doesn't pack up and move to a place like Millerton...you're here for a reason, aren't you?" I look away from him and back down at my wooden kitchen floor. "Lymphoma...Non-Hodgkins. Took her in a year and three months." He mumbles that.

"...My husband died." He told me one of his secrets, I think. I could tell him one of mine now. "I needed a new start."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Hey Jo..." I just had a thought. Lyla's on my shoulder still taking her nap and I'm halfway out the door but I had a thought. She folds up the bloody washcloth she used to clean off my face and says, "huh?" I've been down here for a little over an hour and aside from reuniting with my baby girl, talking to Jo is literally the only thing I've really done. It wasn't boring talking to her. I actually enjoyed myself. But I think it's time for me to take my Lyla home now. I still have to have a long talk with her about why she shouldn't run away and I missed her so much that all I really want to do is build a tent and get in it with her...right after I make her a big pan of lasagna for dinner. I know I probably shouldn't reward her for running away with tents and lasagna but after all the scary thoughts I had about her today...I just wanna see her smile. "What are you doing for the Fourth of July?" She pauses in her folding and says nothing. Lyla turns her head on my shoulder and moans in her sleep. I switch her positioning and catch a glimpse and see that her eyes are open. They look especially green today...Jenna's eyes. "What do you think, Ly? You think Jojo should come with us?" Lyla nods her head and burrows her face in my chest to properly wake up.

"I'm not-" She starts but I interrupt her.

"You should come to the boardwalk festival with us if you're not doing anything." I extend the invite. I partly expect her to say no and tell me that it turns out she does have other plans because I know Jo has other friends. The thing is...I don't. I don't have other friends that I could invite. If I were to go to the boardwalk festival, it would just be me and it would be Lyla and that's it. I wouldn't have anyone to talk to besides Lyla and that would be it. So I really hope she doesn't have other plans. I think after today...I could officially consider Jo to be one of my friends. She helped me out immensely today. I'm still thanking god that she was home today. If she wasn't home when Lyla came down here, I don't know where Lyla would have gone. And she took her in here, checked to make sure she was okay, put her to sleep and called me. She could've called the cops and then coupled with my mom's accusations, the cops would've probably taken Lyla away from me. But she didn't. She didn't call the cops...she called me. So after today...Jo's my friend. Maybe my best friend...maybe my only friend...but my friend for sure. "It'll be fun...me, you and Ly."

"I would love to." She smiles at me, toothlessly. "Thanks for the invite." She puts the bloody washcloth in a plastic bag. "I'll see you guys later."

"We'll see you." I open the door once again. "Come on, Ly...let's go home."

"Wait, Alex..." Jo stops me from walking out the door for the second time. I keep my arms tightly around Lyla and turn around. "...Tomorrow...six in the morning?" She's confirming what time I'm bringing Lyla to her tomorrow morning. Apparently, Jo doesn't work tomorrow and she'd be happy to watch Lyla for me so she doesn't have to go to the shop with my dad.

I nod my head in confirmation. "Tomorrow, six in the morning."


	16. Got This

Baking an entire pan of lasagna today just reminded me of why I shouldn't turn the oven on in the summertime. When Jenna was still around, she never did. She always made it a point to make something on the stovetop or something cold for dinner in the summer. The only kind of hardcore baking she ever did in the summertime was baking her macaroni and cheese for the Fourth of July. Other than that, the oven never came on in the summertime and I can finally fully understand why. Our house has a central air conditioning unit and even still, I have sweat pouring out of every pore in my body. I'm glad the lasagna is finally done though. I just turned the oven off about ten minutes ago and it's already significantly cooler in here. I close the dishwasher after loading it with the dishes I dirtied up by making the lasagna and walk over to the counter to pick up my shirt. I took it off once I started sweating. It's still pretty sweaty so instead of putting it back on, I just toss it in the hallway so Ii can take it to the laundry room whenever I'm finished in here. I'm not the only shirtless one but Lyla's shirtless for a totally different reason than I am. I took her shirt off just because I didn't want her to stain it with sauce while she eats her lasagna. Good thing I took it off too, because she has sauce all over her cheeks and all over her bare chest and I imagine her shirt would be more red than it is white, had I kept it on her.

I've been home from Jo's with Lyla for a little less than an hour and a half now and I still haven't talked to her. I don't know how. I don't know what to say. I don't even know where to start. I've been replaying what I might say to her over and over again in my head since we walked through the door but nothing seems right. I want to tell her why I was so worried about her and why I was so concerned about her running away like that but I can't exactly tell a three year old about all the horrible things that could happen to her. I open the utensil drawer and take out the roll of aluminum foil so I can cover the pan of lasagna up. I haven't eaten yet but I'll probably eat way later, after I take a shower. I gotta talk to her about running away. I need to just get it out of the way. "Hey Ly..." She turns around in her chair to face me when I call her name. Her cheeks are covered in red sauce, she has sauce on her chest and sauce on her nose. Her mouth is open just a little and she's looking at me with those innocent green eyes. I grin at her little sauce covered face. "...Come here, baby." I walk over to her with outstretched arms. She turns all the way around in her booster chair and holds her arms out to me. I ease my hands underneath her armpits and lift her out of her chair. I'm not surprised, but she even has sauce on her pull-up. "Daddy gotta talk to you. But you knew that, didn't you?"

She nods her head and licks sauce off the palm of her hand. She nuzzles her sauce-covered face in the crook of my neck and licks her lips. "I yuh you daddy..." She lifts her head and looks me dead in my eye. She puckers her lips and leans in to kiss me but I dodge her with a laugh, not because she has sauce on her face because I'd kiss her regardless if she had sauce on her face or not. I dodge her because I know her ulterior motive. She thinks she's slick. She knows she's in trouble, that's why she's pulling the "I love you" and giving me a kiss.

"You know you're in trouble, don't you?" I put my hands back under her armpits and hold her up in the air. "You know you were bad." She won't look me in my eye all of a sudden. "Lyla." She still won't look at me. Since I'm holding her up in the air, she curls her little body up into a ball and looks down at the floor like something down there is really holding her attention. "Lyla Isabella Karev." She knows when her full name is used, that it generally means she's in trouble and I mean business, so she looks at me again. "You know you're in trouble, right?" She nods her head slowly. "You know you're not supposed to leave the house without daddy's permission...you know you're not supposed to leave the house without me, period. You know that." She nods her head. "So why did you do it? What made you think it would be okay if you just left like that?" She says nothing. "Do you have any idea how scary that was? Huh? What would you do if you woke up from your nap one day and daddy wasn't here? What if you looked all over the place for me and I wasn't here? Would you be scared? You would be scared, wouldn't you?" She nods slowly again. "So think about how scared daddy was when he couldn't find you. You're never gonna do that to me again, are you?" She shakes her head. "You better not." She pokes her lip out. "...Kiss and a hug now."

She wraps her arms around my neck and squeezes for a hug and when she's done hugging me, she puckers her lips again and pecks me on mine. I think that was a good talking to. I got my point across to her without yelling and without having to mention all the awful things I thought that might have happened to her. I just don't want her to ever think that she has to run away in order to get me to listen to her or understand her. I may not always understand how she's feeling but she really doesn't need to run away every time she feels like she's scared or not being heard. I kiss the underside of her chin before I bring her down from in the air. "...Gammaw scare me." She uncurls herself from the ball she was in and traces her fingers around my nostrils. "Her said...her said I hafta go...to her but...you say no Bawbies if I do...her give you booboo..." She touches the spot on my eye that was bleeding. "...You cwy wiff your booboo, daddy?"

"Yeah." I nod my head. "I cried a lot when I got my booboo. I'm not as tough as you are." I sit her down on the counter so I can clean her off. She's giggling at the thought of me crying. "What? I did. I got my booboo and I started crying. It hurt so bad, I couldn't stop crying. I really needed my Lyla to kiss it but she wasn't here." I run some tap water over a paper towel and start wiping her face with it. She usually fights me to death when I try to wipe her face or her nose but today, she's being real good about it. She lifts her head up so I can get the underneath of her chin. "Will you kiss my booboo now? It'll feel a lot better if you do." I start wiping her chest off too. "Huh? You wanna kiss daddy's booboo?" She shakes her head. "No?! Why not?!"

"Cause Doedoe kiss your booboo alweady, didn't her?" She swings her feet and attempts to roll her eyes in an attitudinal way but she just looks like she blinked really hard.

I toss the soiled paper towel in the trashcan and hold back a laugh. Her mood swings when it comes to Jo are really starting to give me whiplash. One second she's running off to her house and asking if she kissed my cut and the next second, she's making up stories that she peed to get me away from her. I've come to the conclusion that _she_ likes Jo a lot but she doesn't quite want _me_ to like Jo. "No, Jojo did not kiss my booboo." I pick her up and throw her over my shoulder, which makes her shriek in delight. "Speaking of..." I carry her over to the steps and start climbing up them with her. She needs a bath. "Instead of going to Pappy's shop tomorrow...I was thinking maybe you could go hang out with Jojo while daddy's at work...what do you think?" I take her into the bathroom. "You could hang out with her for a little while...play ponies with her...maybe watch a couple movies..." I peel off her pull-up and take her hair out of the ponytail she had it up in. "Would you like that?"

"Doedoe come here and pay wiff me?" She toddles over to the tub and climbs inside. She likes to sit in the tub while the water fills up. I don't know why but she just does and I don't question it. She stands in the back of the tub where the water won't hit her to wait while I adjust the temperature. I twist the knobs and put equal parts hot and equal parts cold water. "I show her my toys and my woom. Her pay wiff me when you at work? Can she daddy?!"

"Um..." I pour some bubble bath into the water and take a moment to think. I was just gonna have Lyla pack a bag with me tonight. I was gonna tell her to put all her favorite toys in her bag and I was gonna pack a Lunchable or something and maybe some snacks and I was gonna take her down Jo's house. But maybe Lyla has a point. Jo should come here, shouldn't she? All of Lyla's toys and food is here in our house. It would be easier for her to just come here instead of me dragging all Lyla's stuff there. "Yeah, Jojo's gonna come here and play with you while I'm at work." I open up the pink bottle of her strawberry scented princess shampoo and squirt some into her hair. It took me a really long time to learn how to wash her hair after Jenna died. It never occurred to me that the pink shampoo was for Lyla. I would wash her hair with soap like I wash mine with soap when I'm in the shower and for the longest time, I couldn't figure out why her hair was always so knotted when I would go to brush it. Back when my mom was still allowed over my house, she bought me shampoo and conditioner for Lyla's hair. I shampoo and condition her hair now. I never knew I had to condition it too...I don't condition my own hair so I was clueless. I massage the shampoo into her scalp and like a good girl, she tilts her head back for me. "Are you gonna be nice to her?" I gently scratch my fingers into her scalp to make sure it's all clean. It's the first time I've washed her hair since she's had that ear infection so her hair's probably real dirty. "You have to promise me you'll be nice to Jo. If you're not nice to her, she's not gonna want to come back and play with you again."

"I be nice." She tilts her head all the way back for me. I reach over and turn off the water since the tub is pretty filled up. I grab the cup I use to wash her hair and fill it up with water. "I show her my woom, daddy. And we play ponies and Bawbies and we gonna watch...um...Safia the First." She sounds really excited and I'm starting to think that maybe having Jo watch her is the best idea I've had in a while. Jo seems like she's good with kids and the fact that she's younger makes it easier for Lyla to relate to her. I imagine Jo will be able to get on the ground and play dolls with her like my dad can't do. I was actually nervous for Jo to look after her at first because I didn't really want to inconvenience Jo or anything like that but she offered. While we were sitting on her kitchen floor, I was telling her how I had to get Lyla home because I work tomorrow and Lyla was gonna have to go to the shop with my dad since I work 3-11 tomorrow and she offered. She told me that she'd love to watch her for me since she's off tomorrow and I took her up on it.

I massage some conditioner into Lyla's hair and let it sit while I wash her body. Jo really seems like a decent girl. She seems grounded with a good head on her shoulders and it seems like she was raised right. She's someone I could sit down with and have a deep, meaningful conversation with...and there aren't very many people that I could do that with. As I was talking to her, I just kept thinking that she was really down to earth and levelheaded..and when we got deeper into our conversation, I found out exactly why she seems so sensible. She understands what it's like to suffer and for that reason, I misjudged her terribly that day in the car when I called her "princess". At first, I thought she was just making fun of me when she said that her husband died. I wasn't surprised that she was married. She's smart and very witty so it makes sense that _someone_ wanted to marry her at one point in time. But the odds of her losing her husband while I lost my wife are just too slim and for that reason, I thought she was just trying to be funny. But when I looked at her face after she told me that little piece of information, I could tell that she was serious.

There's a part of me that has a newfound, deeper respect for Jo. I've always thought that she was a pretty neat person, as opposed to every other boring individual that lives in this neighborhood. But hearing that she lost her spouse too...that made me think of her as a totally different kind of person. Most everyone in Millerton hasn't suffered and don't understand what suffering is. On the hole, everyone in this town is well off with their good jobs, nice houses and perfect little families. That's why when everyone in the town heard that Jenna died...I was sort of a spectacle. I live in a town where divorces are relatively unheard of, single parents are practically nonexistent and everyone looks at the child weird on the playground if one of their parents is gay. Everyone felt the need to come drop dinner dishes, cakes and pies off at my house when Jenna passed but I know all of them were just interested in seeing how the widowed man in the town was holding up with his motherless daughter though. In a sense, Jo's exactly what this town needs. I'm pretty certain that nobody knows about her the way I do though. I don't think she just goes around telling a bunch of strangers how she's a widow that just came to a new state for a new life after her husband died in some kind of unspecified way, but the fact that she is a widow herself is reason enough for me to respect her. Jo would understand better than anybody what life has been like for me. Believe me...that kind of loss changes a person.

"You ready to get out?" I grab her towel off the rack hanging next to the sink and open it up. I make a mental note to call Jo after I'm done with Lyla, just to ask her if she'd be willing to watch Lyla here as opposed to her house. I towel-dry her hair as best as I can first and then wrap the towel around her body. I let the water out of the tub and carry her to my bedroom to get her dressed. "So Lyla...a little birdy whispered in my ear and told me that someone has a birthday coming up...you know anyone that has a birthday coming up?" Her birthday's been on the backburner in my mind for a few weeks now but being that the Fourth is already next Wednesday, that means Lyla's birthday is in two weeks, on the 15th. I guess it's time for me to start thinking about what I want to do for her. I'll request it off tomorrow at work if Arizona didn't already give it to me. I think I want to do it up real big for her birthday this year, just because she lost Jenna and stuff. Jenna used to throw Lyla the BEST birthday bashes and I don't want Lyla to think that just because her mother is gone, her birthdays are gonna be crappy from here on out. I was thinking about maybe taking her to Disney World for a few days. I looked up the cost and everything. Jenna and I always wanted to take her but we wanted to wait for her to get older so she'd remember everything. She loves the Disney princesses and all things Disney related. I think four years old is old enough to remember. It's only a six hour drive from Pensacola or a one hour flight and it's not like I can't afford it. I make enough money to book the trip right now if I wanted to. I think I'll take her to Disney for her birthday. "I think my little birdy told me that someone's gonna be four...but I don't know who."

"...Uhhhh...MY birfday daddy!" She stands up on the bed and jumps up and down on it. "My birfday is Jalay fifteef...I be four..." She holds up four fingers. "My birfday dada."

"Nuh uh...your birthday isn't coming up and you're not gonna be four." I put a pull-up on her.

"Yeah huh!"

"No way...you're not gonna be four. You're not even three yet!"

"I am! I thwee!"

"No you're not. No way! You're getting old on me, Ly." I run a brush through her hair before I put her nightgown on. "You're really gonna be four?!" She nods her head fast. "Well then...what should we do? We should go get our bellybutton's pierced like mommy and we should get our driver's license, shouldn't we? Since you're gonna be four..." She giggles. "What? You're gonna be all grown up. Maybe I should go find you your own house. Grown ups don't live with their daddies." She shakes her head and looks at me with a big, wide smile. "...Okay, maybe you won't get your own house. You just want some cake and ice cream? I don't think we're gonna have a party this year..." She puts her head down and I see her little lip poke out. My mind is officially made up. I'm gonna go to Arizona tomorrow and ask her if I can have July 13th-July 20th off. Seven days should be enough to get through the entire park. We're going to Disney for her birthday. I'm gonna ask my dad if he wants to come. "Is that okay with you? If we don't have a party, is that okay?" Her lip is still poked out but she nods. "Okay...so no party for Lyla this year. We're just gonna eat cake and ice cream...daddy probably has to work on your birthday anyway."

"...You gotsta work?" She lifts her head up and looks at me with tears lining the rims of her pretty green eyes. "...Kay."

"Yeah, daddy has to work on your birthday. But don't worry...we'll still have fun." I pull her nightgown over her head. "You want princesses on your cake? Snow White and stuff?" She nods her head with her lip still poked out. Now I have to think of a way to tell her that we're going to Disney. Isn't that usually a big deal to little kids? Finding out they're going to Disney World, I mean. Actually, I don't think I'm gonna tell her. I think I'm just gonna tell her that we have to go somewhere for my job. We're obviously gonna take a plane there because I can't imagine driving six hours with my toddler. I'll just take her on the plane with me and tell her that we're going somewhere for my job or something like that. Then after the plane lands, we'll drive to the park and that's how she'll find out. I was actually looking on their website last night and they have a bunch of little birthday packages. The one package I was looking at included arriving to the park in Cinderella's horse-drawn carriage and having dinner at Cinderella's castle with Cinderella and Prince Charming. The kid gets those little fast pass things for their birthday and a free pair of Mickey Mouse ears. The kid also gets to walk around the park with their favorite characters and stuff like that. Of course, that was the most expensive package I was looking at. I think I might go with the cheapest one. Not because I don't have the money to spend on the most expensive one because I do. I'm just not sure how much Lyla would enjoy all of that. She tends to be really shy so I don't know if arriving to the park in a horse carriage and all that is a good idea. I think I just want her to have the dinner in Cinderella's castle and have the easy pass thing. I have a lot more research to do with all of this. Jenna was better at planning than I am.

"Can we go...to the beach for my birfday, daddy?" She's sitting down on the bed with her lip all poked out and staring at the quilt. If she keeps up with this sadness act, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to make her wait long enough to surprise her. I don't like seeing her sad. She stopped jumping on the bed and everything.

"No...no beach for your birthday. We're just gonna have cake and ice cream and that's all." I pick her up off the bed. Surprisingly, she's not crying...but she sure looks like she wants to. "Come on, let's go get a snack before bed."

 **X X X**

I jog down the steps and hurry to go answer the door. I asked Jo to be here a little before 2:30 because it takes me half an hour to get to work and I have to be there by 3:00. She took me very literally when she came ringing the doorbell at 2:05. I don't mind though. I'd rather her be early than late. I glance in the living room to make sure Lyla is still on the couch sleeping and she is. She usually naps from about 12:00 to 1:30 but she woke up this morning at 8:30 instead of her usual 10:00 so I knew her nap would last a bit longer. She didn't fell asleep around 11:30 and she's been asleep since. I took a small nap with her since she had be up at the crack of dawn. I think she woke up so early because she's excited about Jo coming over today. I unlock the door and pull it open. "Hey..." I greet her. She's dressed in a light gray t-shirt with a black Nike logo across the front and a pair of very bright orange and purple shorts. She doesn't match but I don't think she cares and I like that about her. Either she's the type that thinks that there are more important things in life to worry about than matching her clothes or she's just comfortable enough around me and my daughter to the point where she feels like she doesn't have to match and look decent. Her short, shoulder-length hair is wavy and she has her cell phone and a purse in her hand. I stand aside to let her in. "I said before 2:30...you took me seriously."

"Well yeah... I don't want you to be late for work...and I only live right there." She slides off a pair of black Converse sneakers by my door and reveals that her pair of socks don't match either. One sock is purple and the other sock is orange. I can't help but wonder if she wore the two socks to actually match her shorts. "You said before 2:30 and it's before 2:30, isn't it?" She blows a bright pink bubble between her lips and when it pops, it smells heavily of bubblegum. To be honest, I was beginning to think she didn't own a pair of shorts. She's wearing pants about 90% of the time when I see her so seeing her in shorts is kind of a nice change, I guess. She's really leggy. She's pretty short...she must only be about 5'5 or something like that but her legs are really, really long. On her left leg, I notice a bright pink scar that starts at her kneecap and snakes all the way up until it disappears under her shorts. I stop looking though. I had to have been looking really hard to notice the scar in the first place. She's looking around my house, making herself familiar I guess. "Nice place." She mumbles.

"Thanks." I look around the kitchen as well. It really is a nice house...Jenna made sure of that. "So um...lemme give you the royal tour before I leave." I motion for her to follow me and she does, looking around the entire time. "Living room...the child..." I point to Lyla who's still sleeping on the couch. Jo laughs at me, probably because I pointed Lyla out in the first place. "Pull-ups are right in that basket there." I look at her to see if she's judging. I see no judgment in her eyes but maybe she's just good at hiding it. Or maybe she's really not judging. "Yeah, Lyla's not potty trained yet. I'm...working on it." Jo shrugs. "Anyway...dining room that we don't use, laundry room back there. Back door's there and leads to the backyard. She can go out there and play if she wants but make sure she wears shoes. She doesn't like to wear shoes much so just force them on her." She nods her head and looks around at the pictures hanging up on the wall. They're mostly of Lyla but there are a couple of me and Jenna. I took the majority of the pictures of me and Jenna down. They were too painful to look at, but I kept the one of us on our wedding day up. "The upstairs is self-explanatory...you don't really have to go up there if you don't want to but Lyla will probably drag you up there to play in her room." She smirks. "Okay so... I fed her breakfast but that's as far as I got. She slept through lunch so when she wakes up, she'll probably be really hungry. There's a pan of lasagna in the fridge that you can heat up for her for lunch. She'll eat that for dinner too, she loves the stuff. And there's food in the cupboards, in the fridge and in the freezer...help yourself to anything if you get hungry. If you give her juice, give it to her in a sippy cup. If she doesn't freak out on you, can you try to give her a bath? If she freaks, don't force it...I'll do it when I get home. Her bedtime is 10:30 but she might want to stay up and wait for me to get home, which is fine. I'll be home by 11:30, no later than 12:00. If you have any questions, you can call me. I'll most likely answer but if I don't, it's because I'm in surgery and I'll call you back as soon as I get out of it. Are you cool with all this?"

"Yep." She gives me a thumbs up. "Give the kid a freshly brewed beer when she wakes up, feed her nothing but cake and cookies, let her go buckwild and run around the neighborhood...got it." I wrinkle my brow at her. I know she's kidding but I'm trying to figure out if that last remark was a jab at me...about running around the neighborhood, I mean. "I'm totally joking, Alex." She rolls her eyes at me and smiles. "I can handle a toddler. One question though..." I raise my eyebrows. "Should I let her sleep for as long as she wants to? Or is there a certain time you would like her to be awake by?"

"Let her sleep for as long as she wants. If you wake her up, you WILL have a hard time with her. She'll be all cranky and that won't be good for you. So just let her sleep. She'll be awake soon enough, trust me. She never naps for too long."

"Okay. And...why would she freak out if I tried to bathe her? Is she...like afraid of water or something?" She narrows her eyes and tilts her head as if she's trying to understand. I'm not regretting my decision of letting Jo watch her for me but I do hope that I didn't make a mistake. Lyla said that she was excited for Jo to come babysit her but I know what it's like when Lyla doesn't like someone and she can be pretty rough. I hope she treats Jo alright today. Lyla can be a bit of a handful if she doesn't like you. She'll scream, cry, kick, yell...it could be a rough night for poor Jo if Lyla doesn't take to her.

"No, she's not afraid of water or anything like that. She just...she listens to me a lot. And I always told her that people aren't allowed to see her naked. I always told her that the only people that can see her naked are me and my parents. So she might really take that to heart if you try to bathe her. I talked to her about it last night though. I told her that if she needs a bath, you might try to give her one and she said that was okay. I'm just trying to be thorough and warn you, that's all."

"Oh...okay. I'll try to be nice about it if she'll let me." She looks around my hallway where we're standing and sighs. "Anything else?" I look up at the ceiling to think and once I'm sure I covered everything, I shake my head. "Alrighty then. I guess I'll be seeing you."

"Yeah, I'll see you Jo. Just...have fun with her. If you need anything...call."

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I purse my lips together to muffle a giggle that wants to come out of my mouth from watching Girl Code. I don't want to wake Lyla up but this episode is hilarious. I bite my lip to conceal another giggle and glance down at Lyla to make sure she's still asleep. She's laying on the end of the couch opposite from me and her little feet are on my lap. I've been here for like half an hour and she's been sleeping since then. If Alex didn't caution me against waking her up, I would've already. I want someone to play with but more so than that, I don't want Lyla to be cranky so like Alex said to, I'll just let her sleep. I don't mind, but I didn't know that I was gonna be here with her until 11:30 tonight. I really don't mind watching her because I like Lyla and I enjoy spending time with her but after yesterday's invitation, I had plans to go into town today so I could buy a bathing suit. Independence Day isn't until next week so I have time but I don't know when my next off day is going to be. I'll make it work though. I have to get a bathing suit sometime though because there's no way I'm going to miss out on going to the boardwalk festival. Sitting at work listening to everyone else talk about their plans to go with their significant others really made me want to go too. Now, I'm not exactly going with my significant other...but at least I'm going with Alex and Lyla.

I should probably tell my friends at the restaurant that I'm going to the boardwalk festival with Alex, before they see us at the festival and make their assumptions about us. If I'm being honest, I'm beginning to see what they mean when they think of Alex in the way they think of him. I can see how my friends would find him attractive and how they would drool over him but I just...can't. I can't even think of him like that. I think of Alex more as my brother...or even my pet fish I had when I was six. I loved that fish to death and cried when I had to flush it down the toilet the week after I got it but I didn't want to kiss and have sex with that fish. That's kind of how I feel about Alex. I'd cry if I had to flush him down the toilet and all but I'm not attracted to him. I think he's handsome though. He has nice eyes and good hair and his teeth are always clean and they're straight but it's more of in a brotherly kind of way. It's like thinking my brother is handsome.

After Alex left my house last night, I sat there on my kitchen floor for a little while longer in silence while I continued to wait for the cable guy (that finally came at 2:30, by the way). I sat there in silence without a sound and without a paintbrush in my hand and I tried to get in touch with my feelings, because that's not something I do very often. I like to push my feelings to the side and ignore them for as long as I possibly can and that's my own way of coping with things. But I sat there and I thought and I took a moment for myself. I thought about why I couldn't find it within myself to be attracted to Alex because halfway through our conversation, I started to think that maybe there's something wrong with me. I had this attractive man sitting in my kitchen and I was talking to him, laughing with him, smiling with him and really getting to know him. Any other woman in this town would be jumping at the opportunity to get to talk to him and there I was, sitting there talking to him and I felt nothing. I felt bare, empty almost. I felt like I was talking to Luke or Lucille, just like I was talking to my friend. So I did some deep, soul searching and I think the reason I can't find Alex attractive is because...well, I guess I kind of feel like I'm betraying Mark if I go off and find another man handsome or attractive. It feels like I'm forgetting all about Mark and I don't want to do that. I want to honor my husband's memory and respect his wishes. I belonged to him at one point in time and just because he's dead now...that doesn't mean that I'm not his anymore, does it? I don't know. All I know is that even if I was looking to be in another relationship with someone else, I don't think I could do it. I think losing Mark has left me emotionally stunted and that's not fair. How could I give myself to another man when I can't stop thinking about my dead husband? That wouldn't be fair to the other man now would it?

From the corner of my eye, I see something move. I turn my head to see what it was and just like I suspected, Lyla's waking up. A smile creeps across my face when I see her. She sits up and rubs her eyes. Her hair is sticking to the side of her face and her cheek is all red from having slept on it. She was sleeping hard. I don't think she noticed me yet because she hasn't even opened her eyes. All she did was sit up and start rubbing her eyes. "Hello..." I turn my voice into my soft, baby voice and scoot over towards her. I can't help myself. I just have to hold her. "Are you up? Are you up now, honey?" I smuggle my hands underneath her arms and pull her toward me. She starts whining, which melts my heart. "Oh no, don't cry sweetheart...don't cry." I pick her up and pull her onto my lap. She rubs her eyes harder and lets out a very sharp wail. She's full-out crying now. "Shhh...I know." I force her head on my shoulder and start stroking her hair. "I know sweetie...I know. You wake up to a strange person in your house...I know." She lies on my shoulder and puts her arms around me while she cries. "Shhh..." I rub her back in a circle. "Yeah, I know." I run my fingers through her hair and slowly rock from side to side with her in my arms.

"Doedoe..." Her voice is soft and groggy.

"Yeah..." I rest my cheek against the top of her head. She lets me go and lifts her head up off of my shoulder. I loosen my hold on her and she pulls away to look me in my eye. She whines again and nuzzles her face back in my neck. "You want something to drink?" She nods her head. "Okay, let's go get something to drink...come on." I don't know how she feels about being babied and held so just to be safe, I lean down to put her on the ground. She shrieks and wraps her legs around my hip. "Okay, I'll carry you...don't yell at me, I'll carry you." I carry her to the kitchen. She lifts one of her arms up and stuffs it into my hair, literally into my hair. I feel her fingers brushing against my scalp but I think she's rubbing a piece of my hair. "Are you hungry?" I open up the fridge and look around for what I should give her. Their fridge is packed but mostly with things that would be for Lyla. Juice boxes, applesauce cups, pudding cups, a couple boxes of Gerber snacks, a jug of apple juice and only a few cases of soda. "Your daddy said to give you some lasagna. You want some of that?" I grab the jug of apple juice and pick up the pink sippy cup Alex left out for me on the counter.

"No zong-ya." She's still sucking on her pacifier, I can feel it bobbing against my collarbone. She seems content to lay on my shoulder and I'm fine with that. I like cuddling too. I hand her the sippy cup once I fill it up and she takes it but she doesn't bother drinking any. She just holds it and keeps her head on my shoulder. "Doedoe..."

"Yeah?" I turn off the kitchen light and take her back to the living room.

"Dow."

"Down?" I ask. She nods. I bend down again and put her down on the floor. I walk to go sit back on the couch, hoping she'll follow my lead but she doesn't. She drops her cup in the middle of the floor and waddles over to a basket. Thank god the cup is one of those no-spill cups because I don't feel like cleaning apple juice out of Alex's carpet. But while I'm looking at the cup to make sure none of it spilled on the floor, I feel Lyla push something against my leg. I look to see what it is. She's holding a pink and white princess pull-up in her hands and pushing it against my leg. "Do you need to be changed?" She nods her head and looks at me with wide, gorgeous green eyes and a semi-open mouth. "Did you pee pee? Or did you go poop?"

"I pee peed."

"Okay...I can handle that." I lift up the t-shirt she has on and pull down her yellow pajama shorts. She holds onto my kneecap and steps out of them for me. I tug at the sides of the pull-up and pull them apart. It falls down on the floor so I reach down and pick it up. It's really, really, really heavy. No wonder she wanted to be changed. I put the dirty pull-up on the coffee table and hold open the new one. I wonder why she hasn't been toilet trained yet. If she's old enough to know when she needs to be changed and old enough to bring me a pull-up when her diaper is full, she's old enough to go on a potty. I pull the fresh one up on her hips. "There we go. All clean." I hold open her shorts. "We've got a nice, clean baby now." I roll up the dirty pull-up and take it to the kitchen. When I go into the kitchen and transition from carpet to hardwood floors, I hear continuous pit-pat of feet following me.

"Doedoe..." She taps me on my leg.

I turn around and look down at her. "What, honey?" She's currently drinking some of her juice so I wait on her. When she's done, she puts it down and taps me on my leg again, as if I ever stopped listening to her in the first place. "What baby?"

"Come on...I..." She grabs my hand and starts pulling me. "I show you my woom."


	17. Like You So Much

I shift the weight off my left leg and push some off onto my right one. I should've taken some pills before I came here but clearly, I wasn't thinking. I also wasn't thinking that I would be doing something that would require me to be sitting on my ass for an uncomfortable amount of time. In hindsight, I should've at least brought a bottle of pain reliever with me but I wasn't expecting to be hurting while I was babysitting. I'm not even 30 years old yet. I don't care what anyone says, I'm way too young to ache as badly as I do. I adjust my butt so I'm sitting in the middle of the pink fold-out chair. So far, I think my babysitting gig is going pretty well. Lyla brought me upstairs to her room about two hours ago and we've been in here ever since. First, she made me play Barbies with her but it wasn't long before she got bored with that and gave me a pony to play with. She played with a pink pony and I played with a yellow one. She was my baby and I was her mommy and our ponies got into a fight because she didn't want to brush her teeth. After ponies, I made her get something to eat. I could hear her stomach growling but every time I asked her if she was hungry, she would tell me no and I knew it was only because she didn't want to stop playing long enough to eat. After our food break, she dragged me back up the steps and we played "school." She has a little chalkboard easel in her room so I pretended to be her student and my lesson involved trying to figure out what a bunch of pictures she drew on the chalkboard were. That was the last thing we played before we started playing what we're playing now.

She went inside her closet and dragged out a big red plastic tub filled with dress-up costumes. She gave me a silver and pink tiara to wear and a pair of white princess gloves and she's been referring to me as "Princess Jojo." She's Princess Lyla too, but she's dressed better for the role than I am. She's sporting one of those cone-shaped princess hats with the long tassel coming out of the top. Her hat is pink with a purple tassel and she's wearing a pink and purple ballerina suit over her clothes, complete with a yellow cupcake tutu. She said she wanted to have a tea party with her "friends" so she set her pink princess picnic table with little multicolored plates and tiny cups. She even sat her stuffed penguin and her stuffed lion at the table with us. I felt sort of bad though, when she started pouring the fake tea into the cups. So I asked her if she wanted to have a real tea party and her little face was priceless. She helped me carry all the dishes downstairs and I washed them up in the sink so they were nice and clean. I took out a package of little chocolate snack cupcakes from the cupboard and warmed some apple juice up in the microwave before I poured it in the teapot, just because I don't know if he keeps any teabags in the house and I wouldn't feel right searching.

She has a beautiful room, by the way...I can tell that her mom decorated it. Not that Alex is a bad father or incapable of doing anything like that but he just doesn't strike me as the type to decorate like this. This is the work of a woman, I'm sure. Her walls are painted light pink and her baseboards are all trimmed in purple. Her name is hanging on the wall next to her bed and it's made out of yellow wooden cut outs. Her bed has a white wooden frame with pink drawers in the bottom and a pink flight of steps that allow her to step up into it. Her bed is perfectly made with her pink Disney princess quilt tucked neatly underneath her mattress, her white canopy undisturbed and the pink pillows resting neatly at the top of the bed. All of this tells me that she doesn't sleep in here. Her room is the biggest room in the house and I can understand why it would need to be. She has toys coming out of her ears. A double-sided chalkboard and on the other side of that chalkboard is an easel for her to paint or draw. She has a bin full of Barbie dolls and accessories in one corner, next to a Barbie doll mansion and about five different Barbie cars. She has a little picnic table and four chairs, she has bins of blocks and Legos, a shelf full of board games and movies to watch, a rocking horse, a bin full of baby dolls and all their accessories that go along with them, a fake kitchen set...I think I covered everything.

"May I have more tea, Princess Lyla?" I hold my red teacup over towards her, mindful to keep my pinky finger up in the air. She told me that real princesses drink and eat with their pinkies up. She excitedly nods her head and puts down her cupcake that she was just eating. She has the white frosting from the middle of the cupcake all over her nose but none on her cheeks, which I find strange. She picks up the teapot and very carefully pours me some more warm apple juice. "Mmmm...thank you." I put the cup to my lips and sip it. "It's delicious." She puts the teapot back down and picks her cupcake back up. This is the longest she's stayed interested in something that we've done. Every other game we played lasted only half an hour, 45 minutes tops. But we've been at this tea party thing for quite sometime now. "You're really good at throwing tea parties Princess Lyla."

She picks the rest of the frosting off her cupcake and sticks it in her mouth. When the frosting off her cupcake, she holds the cake part to her stuffed lion's mouth and "feeds" it to him. "...My mommy throwed me tea pawties all the times." She puts the cupcake back on the plate and picks up her teacup. "Wiff cuppycakes and juice and everyfing." She carefully tilts the cup to her mouth and sips it. "...Dada no good wiff tea pawties, Doedoe." She shakes her head. "Hims hopeless."

I laugh at that. "Your daddy's hopeless?" She nods her head. "Well maybe you need to teach your daddy how to throw good tea parties. He probably doesn't know how to. You gotta teach him." I dust off the last small piece of my cupcake and chew it with my lips together. I think I've learned a lot about Lyla today, just by playing with her. Little kids are little blabbermouths whenever they're talking to the right people and under the right circumstances. While we were playing Barbies, she told me that her birthday is July 15th and her daddy is a big fat meanie because he has to work on her birthday. She also told me that she hates going to her Pappy's car shop because it stinks, she likes Taylor Swift, her favorite movie is "Frozen" and that her daddy snores. "After we're done with our tea party, we're gonna go take a bath. Is that okay with you?" She shakes her head. "No? But princesses aren't dirty. Princess takes baths all the time and you have to take a bath too. You don't wanna stink, do you?" I lick crumbs off my lips and slip my white gloves off my hands. She shakes her head and sits back in her chair while I start to clean up. "Okay then, to make sure you don't stink...you gotta take a bath."

"You take bafs, Doedoe?" She climbs out of her chair and takes her princess hat off her head. She tosses the hat on the ground and toddles over to me. She reaches both her hands up and I lean my head down because I know that she wants to take my crown off herself. "You get bafs too?"

"Yeah, I take baths." I nod my head and stand up. I try not to let my face reveal that I'm in pain but I really am. I need to lie down or something. There's way too much pressure in my hips. I need to lie down or sit down. "I don't want to be dirty so I take a bath every day." I carry all of our dress-up clothes back to her bin and put them away. She follows me around like she doesn't know what else to do and I don't really mind it. I guess her following me around is better than her throwing a tantrum on me, right? "What do you wanna do after you take your bath, Lyla?" I walk to the bathroom and turn on the light. She toddles into the bathroom and stands next to the tub. I kneel down next to the tub and stare at the knobs on the tub while I try to figure out how to work it. Lyla stands behind me and I feel her arms reach around my stomach and squeeze me while her head is in the middle of my back. "Are you hugging me?" She nods her head in the middle of my back. My hand is wet from testing the temperature of the water so I can't hug her back right now but the fact that she's actually hugging me is enough to make me smile. "Thank you honey." I stroke her little hand with my wet hand though. "You ready to take a bath now?" She nods again and lets me go.

I close the drain in the tub and pour a little bit of bubble bath in the water. Once I'm done, I turn around and start to take her clothes off. I take her arms out of the armholes of her shirt first and pull it over her head. I pull down her shorts and peel off her pull-up as well. "Can we wash a moobie next, Doedoe?" She steps out of her pull-up for me and starts chewing on her index finger for some reason. I nod my head to answer her question and pick her up. I deposit her naked body into the water and she sits down. "You comin' to the beach wiff us, Doedoe?"

"Yes." I start by washing up her back. Alex said I don't have to wash her hair if I don't want to and so I won't. It's not that I don't want to, I just don't want to risk getting shampoo in her eyes or anything. I've never washed a baby's hair before so I don't exactly know what I'm doing in that department. "I'm coming to the beach with you and your daddy. Are you excited? Do you like the fireworks and stuff?"

"...You comin' wiff daddy?" She looks up at me and I can see the discontent on her face. "On...on a dake?"

"No!" I accidentally yell at her but damn, she caught me off guard with that. "No no, honey...not a date. Just...as a friend, okay?" She nods her head and puts it back down again. She's playing with the bathmat at the bottom of the tub. "Me and your daddy are friends...just like me and you are friends. You know how me and you hang out and play and stuff?" I wash under her armpits and stand her up. She nods her head and holds onto my shoulder when I start to wash between her legs. It's like she has this whole bath thing down on a routine and she knows what to do at specific times. Like when I washed her back, she kept her head down so I could get her neck and when I washed her armpits, she held her arms up for me. I'm washing between her legs now and she's holding onto my shoulder for balance support because she lifts her leg up for me. "That's what me and your daddy are. We're friends."

"...You play wiff my daddy? Daddy no like to play..." She shakes her head and lets my shoulder go when I'm done.

"No..." I laugh and gently force her back into sitting in the tub so I can rinse the suds off her. "When grown ups are friends...they just talk and sometimes they hang out at other places, like the beach. But it's still the same thing. We're friends. We don't go on dates, we just hang out on the beach and stuff."

"...So you no..." She gazes at me with those eyes that make me melt. "You no be my daddy geerlfend?"

"No. I'm not your daddy's girlfriend and I'll never be your daddy's girlfriend." I'm pretty confident when I say that to her. I wouldn't tell her that if I wasn't sure about it so I'm pretty sure, just to say the least. I can't foresee anything romantic ever blossoming between Alex and I. He's too hung up on his wife and I'm too hung up on Mark. I can safely say that the most we'll ever be is friends and it sure seems like that pleases Lyla. If I put myself in a three year old's perspective, I could see why she wouldn't want me...or anyone for that matter, to be Alex's girlfriend. From what I understand, her mother's death is still pretty fresh and I'm sure it stings for her to even think about her daddy dating again. I have to wonder if she'll ever come around though. A man like her dad surely can't stay single for the rest of his life. So I wonder if she'll ever be alright with the fact that her dad's dating. Probably not, but I suppose that's a good question to consider. Lyla's mom was really beautiful, anyway. I saw pictures of her hanging up downstairs and she was breathtakingly gorgeous. She had very curly, long brownish, blackish hair and her eyes mirrored Lyla's eyes. From the pictures I saw, she was taller and she wasn't stick skinny but she wasn't big either. She had a nice, middle of the line kind of body. She and Alex probably made one hell of a couple. Alex is a really handsome guy, his wife was a really pretty woman and their daughter is beautiful as well. They were probably a picture-perfect kind of family. I can only imagine.

"Nebber?" She stands up when I'm done washing her up and waits for me to wrap a towel around her body. I shake my head to answer her question. "Good... 'cause my mommy and my daddy...they's gettin back togedder...so daddy no need geerlfends. He has to...not have geerlfends so my mommy can take him back."

For some reason, hearing her say that makes me incredibly sad. I'm guessing she doesn't fully understand what happened to her mom and now my heart aches for her. Death is such a horrible thing. I'm 29 years old and I'm still trying to figure out how to cope with my husband's death. I can only imagine how hard and confusing this must be for her. She's a baby. She thinks her mom is coming back and my heart aches for that fact. I wrap the towel around her body and lift her out of the tub. "...So..." I stand her on the floor and start towel drying her. It's not my place to talk to her about death though. I'd be way, way, way out of line if I talked to her about this so I'll leave that to Alex. But the least I could do for her is play along, right? "Your mommy and your daddy are getting back together, huh?" I rub her butt dry and move on to her back. "That must be exciting...do you know when they're getting back together?"

"When my daddy is good...'cause when hims good, him gets to go to heabben wiff mommy...and I go too when I'm good."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

It's quiet in here. Not that it shouldn't be, because in a sense, I guess it should be. It's 11:37 at night so it should be quiet. But it's a little too quiet, that's what I mean. I softly shut the front door behind myself and slip my shoes off. I don't want to turn on any lights in case I disturb anyone or anything because in addition to it being quiet in here, it's also dark. I assume it's dark for a reason though. So since I can't see anything through the darkness that is my house, I narrow my eyes and look around the kitchen. Everything seems in place. No dirty dishes in the sink, no juice spills on the counter...everything is tidy. I put my cell phone down on the counter and pad through the house wearing nothing but my socks. I walk through the hallway and go straight for the living room. The only light in the house is coming from the TV in the living room and PAW Patrol is playing on the TV. Don't ask how I know about PAW Patrol. When you have a three year old, you tend to pick up on the different TV shows they have for little kids. And yeah, I know the entire cast of PAW Patrol. I can tell you about Ryder, Chase, Marshall, Zuma, Skye, Rocky and Everest. Lyla goes crazy over "The Pup Pup Boogie" song. I watch way too much children's television between at home and in the hospital.

On the couch, Jo is lying down and staring at her cell phone it seems. Lyla is laying down on top of Jo with her head on her chest and turned to the side so she can see the TV. There's a pink blanket draped across the both of them and they both seem really content. Well...at least Jo's still alive, I guess. There was a apart of me that was expecting to walk in the house to Lyla pitching a fit and Jo telling me that she'll never babysit for me ever again. It doesn't look like the two killed each other for one and for two, it looks like things went well. Lyla actually let Jo touch her. I quietly walk towards the couch and tap Jo on the shoulder. I tried to be nice about it so I didn't scare her, but she jumps and gasps anyway. "Sorry...didn't mean to scare you." She locks her phone and puts it back down. "...How was everything?"

"Great..." She puts her hands on Lyla's back and lifts herself up. "She um..." If I didn't know any better, I'd say Jo was on her way to sleep too. She sounds tired. "She was trying to wait up for you but she knocked out about...45 minutes ago." Lyla is out cold and it's not until Jo sits up that I realize Lyla has her arms wrapped around Jo's torso.

"So you've been sitting on my couch for 45 minutes watching PAW Patrol?" I sit down on the arm of my couch.

"No..." She shakes her head and even though it's a little bit dark in here, the light from the TV allows me to see her smile. "...There was an episode of Wallykazam before this." She giggles softly and rubs her hands along Lyla's back. "Have you seen an episode of Wallykazam?" She asks me and I nod. I've seen quite a bit of Wallykazam, PAW Patrol, Sofia the First, Doc McStuffins, Bubble Guppies, Octonauts...I've seen it all. "Bobgoblin is the biggest asshole I've ever come across...on a children's show, too. He's such a dick. He's almost as bad as Spongebob." She actually makes me laugh with that. "No, I'm serious. I sat here and watched an episode...and they were trying to get in the enchanted castle or whatever...and that asshole wouldn't give them the keys. What a dick."

"Shut up, Jo." I shake my head at her. I think "asshole" is her favorite swear word. I just haven't ever heard her say anything worse than that. She called me an asshole once, back at my dad's shop. I've heard her say "asshole" and now "dick" and I kind of get the feeling that Jo doesn't cuss much. "But seriously..." I stifle a yawn and run my hands through my hair. I'm actually pretty exhausted myself from work. Work kicked my ass today. "How'd everything go? What'd you guys do all day?"

"Everything went well. She woke up...like...half an hour after you left and I changed her diaper and gave her some juice. She dragged me up to her room like you said she would and we played a lot. We played...Barbies, ponies, school and we had a tea party. I was Princess Jo and she was Princess Lyla. And I gave her a bath and we came back down here. She showed me how to play a game on your Wii and we played that for a little while and then I turned on some show about a purple princess and she watched that and Wallykazam and PAW Patrol until she fell asleep. I fed her some of that lasagna like you asked and she had a cupcake with her tea. And that's pretty much it." I can't take my eyes off the way Lyla is seriously so content with sleeping on Jo's chest and in Jo's arms. She looks like she can't be bothered. I think Jo noticed me staring though. "Um...she did this." She bites her lip. "She climbed on my chest. I put the blanket over us and I...I held her. I hope that's okay." She sounds nervous, like I'm gonna yell at her or something. "Sorry if it's not. I just-"

"Jo, it's fine." I shake my head and put my hand up to silence her. "I'm just surprised is all. I didn't think she'd let you do that. She..." I clear my throat. "The only person she ever let hold her like that was her mother. It...took her a while to even let me hold her like that. I'm just surprised. I'm not mad." I reach out and touch my baby girl's hair. "I just didn't know she'd like you that much." Jo looks away from me and down at the floor, like she's embarrassed or maybe even flattered. I can't tell which emotion she's feeling. "Here, lemme take her. I should put her to bed..." She loosens her grip on Lyla and lets me take her. I wrap my arms around my baby girl and as soon as her head leaves Jo's chest, she whines softly and mumbles, "Jojo" under her breath. She's still sleeping though. "Must be dreaming about you." I mumble.

"Yeah, must be." Jo stands up off the couch and folds up the blanket they were covered with. "I should head home. I'm tired as heck...and I have to work tomorrow." She puts the blanket on the arm of the couch and I watch her twist her back around to stretch it out. The look on her face is kind of weird though. I think she's in pain but I won't ask. "I'll let myself out. You don't have to show me out. Go put her to bed." She runs her fingers through her hair and yawns. "I'll see you."

"Hold on." I mumble. I switch Lyla to my more dominant side and hold her up with one arm. I dig around in my pocket in search of my wallet. I find it and open it up. "Here...take a couple 20s."

"Alex, no." She shakes her head "I told you...I told you, you didn't have to pay me. I'd do it for free. I like spending time with her." She shoves my wallet away. "She was really good for me. It's fine, you really don't have to pay me."

"Jo, just take it. I won't feel right if you don't. I know how much of a handful Lyla can be and despite what you said, I know there are a million other ways you could've spent your off day. So please, just take a couple 20s from my wallet and then you can go."

"Alex, I'm not taking the money." She folds her arms across her chest. "I wouldn't feel right taking it from you. I can't take it." I keep my wallet held out to her. I'm not putting it away until she takes some of it. "Ugh!" She groans at me because I think she gets it. I think she understands that I'm gonna make her take some money for watching Lyla today. "Just...you know what?" I raise my eyebrows. "Buy me an ice cream cone...at the boardwalk thing next week. That's how you can pay me. Just buy me an ice cream cone."

"An ice cream cone?" I raise my eyebrow.

"An ice cream cone. A vanilla one...with rainbow sprinkles." She pushes my wallet again. "Please put your wallet away Alex."

"Whatever, Jo...Don't say I didn't try."

"I won't. I won't say you didn't try. I don't want you to pay me for this, Alex. It's like...weird." She shrugs her shoulders. "I offered to watch her and nowhere in my offer did I say that you have to pay me for it. We're friends...I'll watch her whenever you need me to. But don't make me..." She puts her tongue in her cheek and looks away from me. I watch her bite her lip and then eventually, she looks at me. "Don't make me feel like her babysitter." I open my mouth to speak but she doesn't let me. "I know, I know that's technically what I am but...I mean...just don't...you know...make me feel that way. I feel like I just hung out with my little sister today and I don't want that feeling to go away. I don't..." She sighs. "I don't know anybody here, Alex. I need friends...not people I work for or people I work with. I already have tons of friends that way. Can me and you just keep this strictly...friendly? If that makes sense? Don't make me feel like I'm just doing a job for you."

"So you don't want me to pay you because you'll feel like you're just my daughter's babysitter and not my friend?" I actually close my wallet up and stick it back in my pocket. She rolls her eyes and looks down at the floor again. I know for a fact that her eyes are brown because I've seen them in regular light but I swear in just the lighting of the TV, her eyes look very hazel. She has pretty brown eyes...I guess. "If that's what you want then I won't pay you. But I don't get why you would feel like we're not really friends if I don't pay you. Jo, you'd have to be a pretty good friend for me to even trust you with her in the first place. I'm paying you because you did me a huge favor, not because you're nothing but my babysitter."

"Yeah but...at the risk of sounding redundant, Alex don't pay me." She unfolds her arms and puts them down at her sides. "Just get me the damn ice cream cone." Ooh, she said "damn". Add that to the list of swear words I've heard Jo use. I wonder how long it'll be before I hear her drop the word "fuck". Maybe she'll never say it.

"Alright." I finally, reluctantly agree.

"I'll see you later." She smiles at me one last time and turns to leave. I watch her until she disappears into my kitchen and wait until I hear the door close. I'd better take Lyla upstairs put her to bed. I can't wait to take a shower, heat up some of that lasagna and go to sleep myself. I'm glad everything with Jo went smoothly today and I can't wait to hear what Lyla thought of her new babysitter tomorrow morning when she wakes up. If she really did like Jo as much as I think she did, I think I'll have to make Jo a regular babysitter. On the days Jo doesn't work, I'll let her watch Lyla. Of course Jo is a little bit too old to be Lyla's serious friend, but I do like the fact that there's a womanly figure in her life for her to play dolls with and have tea parties, that way she's not missing out so much on the things that Jenna used to do with her. I tried to keep my mom in Lyla's life for those reasons but you see how well that worked out. My mom's a bitch and I couldn't care less if she fell off the face of the earth at this point. It doesn't make me happy to talk about my mom that way but she pushed me into it.

I can't believe Jo said that she wouldn't feel like my friend if I paid her. That's so not true. To be honest, I actually think Jo and I are in the same boat with needing friends around here. I consider Jo to be one of my good friends and whether I handed her twenty bucks or five bucks, that won't change how I feel about her. Speaking of Jo... I gently lay Lyla back down on the couch and lightly jog back to my front door. I don't know why it took me so long to realize that she was walking home but I just did and it dawned on me and so I open up the front door and step out onto my porch. I keep the door open so I can hear Lyla if she starts whining or crying or anything but I walk all the way out to my front lawn. I lean over the fence and gaze down the street. She's walking down to her house and she's more than halfway there already but still. I just want to make sure nothing happens to her.

I know it's dark outside and the only light is coming from the streetlights, but I swear...I think she's limping. Did she hurt herself or something? Did Lyla do something to her today? She wasn't limping when she walked out of my living room, I know that for a fact. So she must've been trying to hide the fact that she was hurt from me. I watch her turn towards the pathway that leads to her house and she disappears behind the trees. I'll ask her why she was limping tomorrow.

 **X X X**

"My friend watched her yesterday for me." I scrape a pancake on his plate and put it on the table in front of him. I'm not sure when making breakfast for Lyla turned into making breakfast for my dad but at some point, it did. It's almost 11:30 in the morning and Lyla's not awake yet. I woke up at 11:00 and decided to come down here and make her pancakes that don't come from a freezer and scrambled eggs. I wanted it to be hot and ready for her when she woke up but I went upstairs to check on her a few moments after my dad walked through the front door and she's still out cold. She must be all played out from Jo yesterday. I sit the butter and the bottle of syrup in front of him and collapse down in my chair. I work 3-11 today nut my dad doesn't have to be at the shop at all today so he can watch her. She would have to go to the shop if my dad did have to work today though. Jo works and she wouldn't be able to watch her for me today. "You know, my friend Jo...she watched her for me. Lyla had a blast with her so I think she might be permanent...for the days you're not able to watch her."

"Jo...that waitress girl? That same girl you're taking to the Independence Day festival with you?" He drowns his pancake in syrup and cuts a sliver of it off with the side of his fork. I nod my head since I currently have a mouthful of hot, black coffee. He's going to the festival with nurse Michelle. "She's pretty." He has a mouthful of pancake but that's not stopping him from talking. I roll my eyes. Does he have to comment on how pretty Jo is? This marks the third time he's called Jo pretty around me. The first time was at the restaurant when she waited on us, the second time was when I picked Lyla up from his house and this is the third. He's acting like I don't already know that he thinks Jo is pretty. Sometimes, when my dad keeps repeating something, he usually wants to know my opinion on it. It's his own subtle way of asking me if I agree or disagree. "How old is she? 24? 25?" He chomps on his pancake. Actually, I think maybe he's a little interested in her.

"She's 29..." I mumble, circling my tongue around my coffee mug to keep myself occupied. His eyebrows raise and his eyes widen. "She's not thinking about you, dad. She's too young for you. Stick to nurse Michelle." I turn my coffee mug up to my mouth again.

"Not for me, Al...for you." He winks at me and takes another bite of pancake. I close my eyes and put my head down. I'm trying to do the "count to ten" method because he really just pissed me off. My dad can always tell when I'm pissed though. "What?! Oh come on, Alex...don't tell me you haven't thought about dating... it's been what? Seven months?" I just glare at him. "No, I know...I know, it's too soon...I don't blame you for that. I know it's too soon. I'm just saying. Haven't you thought about dating? With all those girls that throw their asses at you...you're a good looking kid. Didn't the thought cross your mind? That you're gonna date eventually?"

"No, not really." I shake my head and slide my coffee mug away from me. "I'm content with it just being me and Lyla for the rest of my life, dad...and that's the god-honest truth. The thought hasn't crossed my mind, I gotta be honest. And besides...Lyla freaks out when women even look at me. I wouldn't dare bring another woman into the picture unless it was absolutely okay with Ly and you know that."

"Well I don't want you to spend the rest of your life alone." Every ounce of joking leaves his face and he gets completely serious. "It's no way to live. I know you're feeling like you'll never love anyone like you loved Jenna ever again and that's probably true. You probably won't ever love someone the way you loved Jen and that's okay. That's understandable and that's okay. You don't have to love someone like that. But it doesn't mean that you can't love at all. It's only been seven months...the wound is still fresh. But imagine after it's been seven years...you're probably going to want someone to live the rest of your life with and that's not wrong, Alex. That's not wrong. It's normal to want some companionship. I'm just saying...you'd better start thinking. Losing Jenna isn't always gonna hurt this bad. Eventually you're going to want to move on."

"Maybe you're right." I shrug my shoulders. "But as of right now, the thought hasn't crossed my mind and it certainly hasn't crossed my mind with Jo." I shudder just thinking about it. Jo's not really...sexy or attractive to me. She's more like a buddy. It'd be like finding my sister Amber attractive or finding Mrs. Jensen attractive. It's just weird. "Believe me, it's not like that with me and Jo. She's just real cool. She understands things and she's funny and she's good with listening. She lost her own husband so it's like...it's a connection with us. But it's not sexual, physical or romantic at all. It's strictly friendly."

"It's also okay to find another woman attractive." He mumbles.

"I know it is. I just don't find _that_ woman attractive, that's all." I shrug.

"Then something's wrong with you. Because that woman is sexy as hell, Alex." I cringe listening to my pop talk about Jo like that. Ick. It's...it's Jo he's talking about. "Don't look at me like that. That woman is...she's...she's...she's beautiful, is what she is." He nods. "She's beautiful."

"Sorry but I don't think about Jo like that." I wrinkle my nose. "New subject." I clear my throat. "So I'm taking Lyla to Disney for her birthday...you in or are you out?"

"Out. I can't sit in a car for what? Six hours? I can't do that. You know my knees. But if you need me to foot you something, I got it. I'll chip in and pay...but I planned on grabbing her something for her birthday anyway. I was gonna pick up this little um...this...this pink princess potty I saw at the store...and a pack of underpants. You really need to start training her, Al. She's gonna be four."

"Yeah, I know." I sigh. "But um...I don't think I'm gonna need you to chip in at all. I'm pretty sure I've got it. But you could still come, Pop. I didn't plan on driving. I don't want her to be in a car for six hours either. I'm taking a plane...you still out?"

"Yeah, Al. I can't walk around a park like that with my knees. I would love to, but...It wouldn't be a good idea. You and Ly go have fun." He finishes the rest of his pancake. "But you should probably ask someone else to come with you...preferably a woman." I roll my eyes at him for the millionth time since he's been here. "I'm not implying anything weird, Al. I'm just saying...you should take a woman with you because you know how things are. She's gonna need a woman with her to take her into the girls' bathroom to change her into her swimsuits...all that stuff. It would be best if you had a girl with you when you take a little girl to Disney. Either take a girl or brush up on your princess movies." He shrugs and picks up his glass of orange juice.

"Who the hell would I take, dad? I'm not taking mom...get that out of your head right now."

"Take your doctor friend...Arizona? Take her." He suggests.

"Can't...she's already gonna be short-staffed with me out. She can't take off too."

"So take Jo." He smirks and I sigh so hard that I'm out of breath. "I know, I know...it's not like that and I believe you. You can get a hotel room with two beds, you and Ly in one bed, stick her in the other. And didn't you say Lyla likes her? Take her for Lyla. Don't take her for yourself. Think of it as you're taking Lyla and one of her friends to Disney for her birthday."

"...Jo can't afford that." I mumble. "I'd pay for her...but she wouldn't let me. She wouldn't even let me pay her for watching Lyla last night. The only way she'd come with us is if she paid for herself and she can't afford that. She waitresses, dad."

"You could still offer." He mumbles back. "See how Lyla acts with her at the Independence Day festival...if she does well with having her around then you've got gold for the Disney trip."

"I guess I could see what she says."


	18. Deflect

"I meant to tell you guys but it kind of just...slipped my mind, I guess." I open up the cleaning closet and grab the broom and the dust pan. Lucille, Kaylee, Luke, Macy and I are all working clean up crew again. Usually, I hate working until close because I can't stand cleaning up this place after it gets all dirtied up during the day but I don't mind so much whenever Tony sticks my friends on clean up crew with me. They've been ripping me a new asshole tonight though, because I forgot to mention that I'm going to the festival tomorrow with Alex and Lyla. I didn't intentionally neglect to mention it, I just literally forgot. The fact that I'm going out with Alex just isn't as big a deal to me as it is to them. It just doesn't hold as much importance to me as it should I guess, which is probably why I forgot to say something about it. "It slipped my mind. I've been worrying out a shitload of other things in my life." I start sweeping behind the bar first. "He asked me to go with him a couple weeks ago though...and I said yes. That's all it is."

"So you're going to actually be with him tomorrow? Like...walking around the boardwalk with him, swimming with him, toes in the sand with him?" Macy sits down at the bar and starts filling the holders up with jelly packets. We have to clean this place up really well because we're closed tomorrow due to the holiday and we don't open back up until Thursday. The place has to be clean for two days so Tony expects it to the spotless when he comes in to open up the restaurant on Thursday. I'm off Thursday and Friday. I don't have to see this damn restaurant for three days. I'm not sure whether I'm happy or pissed about that. Happy because like I said, I don't have to see this goddamn place for three days but pissed because I'm missing out on tip money. I got my paycheck yesterday night and of course, it was shitty. It was only $54 but I wasn't expecting much in the first place. I make three bucks an hour for crying out loud. "What are you going to wear?"

"My bathing suit?" I stop sweeping to look at her. "I went out and bought myself a suit. It's black and it's silver...and I have a pair of shorts and a tank top to put over it. What am I supposed to wear to the beach?" I put the broom down and walk over to where she's sitting. I hope she doesn't tell me that I'm going to be dressed wrong. I've never been to a boardwalk or a beach before, even growing up in New Jersey so I guess I could be dressing inappropriately but seriously, what else am I supposed to wear to a beach? High heels and a dress? "Is it something more...like...formal than that?" Macy just smirks and keeps stacking jelly packets in the black wire holder. I look at Kaylee, Lucille and Luke now. "...What are you guys wearing? Should I change my outfit plan?"

"No, you're fine." Kaylee waves her hand at me and continues scrubbing the lobster tank. Every time the five of us are on clean up, it's Kaylee's job to clean the lobster tank. She's the only one out of the five of us that is brave enough to go near those damn things. "I think Mace was just wondering if you planned on wearing something prettier for your first date." She scrubs a toilet brush along the inside of the tank. "I was wondering if you were going to go more formal for your first date too, but you're right. It's a beach after all."

"It's NOT a date." I smack my head down against the counter so they get the picture that they're driving me nuts tonight. Between calling me a "traitor" for not telling them and insisting that I'm going on a date, they're driving me up a tree. "You guys are killing me here. How many times do I have to tell you this? I'm not interested in Alex. We're only friends." I pick my head up and groan at the four of them. They're treating me like I'm some little high schooler with a crush on the most popular guy in school. I should be allowed to have friends that are attractive and are boys. "He's not even dating." I pick up the broom again. "And if he was...it's not like he'd consider me anyway. I'm just...Jo to him. He wouldn't even think twice about me."

"What do you mean you're just 'Jo' to him? Jo, you're hot. I don't know what planet you've been living on but you need to come back down to Earth. You have just as good a chance with Alex as anyone in this town has with him. Maybe a better chance than anyone, actually. His daughter likes you and that tends to be a big deal to people with kids." Macy finishes filling up the holders and stands up. "Why don't you think you have a chance with him?"

"I don't really want a chance with him." I toss the dust pan down on the floor and start sweeping up my pile of dirt into it. "I'm not interested. I'm just saying that if the opportunity did arise and he was looking for someone and I was looking for someone, he wouldn't even think twice about me. It's not like that between me and Alex, first of all. And second of all, he's too good of a friend to ruin the friendship by trying to date. He's literally the guy I just hang out with. I don't think it's ever going to be romantic between me and Alex." I put the broom down again. "To be honest..." I think this is yet another time when I'm getting in touch with my feelings. "I don't even think _I'm_ ready to date yet."

"Do you believe in like...fate? Soulmates? Stuff like that?" Luke puts a pile of menus he collected from the hostess desk down on the bar and starts sorting through them. "Or do you think all of that is a crock of shit?"

"I don't really know." I put my palms down on the bar counter, pull myself up and sit down on top of it. I reach across the way and grab a tortilla chip from the basket we all pitched in and bought for our "dinner" since we're all working past the proper dinner times. I dunk it in some salsa and slip it in my mouth. "I mean, I guess it exists, right? I guess I believe everyone is made for someone. I guess I believe the man upstairs has a plan for everyone on the planet." I shrug my shoulders and lick salsa from the side of my mouth. "It's nice to believe in something like that." I swallow my food. "Why?"

"I dunno, I was just thinking..." He drums his light blue painted fingernails along the bar counter and stares down at one of the menus he was flipping through. "I guess it's kind of ironic that his wife died and your husband died. And you two have been hanging out together. You think maybe fate has something to do with that? Or is it just coincidental? You gotta admit that's pretty weird."

"I don't know." I swing my feet and grab another tortilla chip. "I think it's just coincidental. I don't really think it's anything special. It makes me and Alex...closer, I think. He knows about my husband and I know about his wife and we just connect through that. It's nothing special. It's just really friendly between us. Like...I watch his daughter, that's how friendly it is." I eat my second chip. "I watched his daughter last week. Had a tea party with her and everything. I like his daughter...she's a neat kid. She's like my little sister and Alex...he's like my big brother."

"I still can't believe you didn't tell us you were going with him. That's kind of a big deal." Kaylee snaps the top back on the lobster tank and walks over to us. "It's not something you just overlook, Jo. It's something you tell your friends." She leans against the counter as well. Lucille joins us and takes a handful of tortilla chips. In a motherly kind of way, she runs her fingers through my hair and holds my hands. Ever since I let it slip that a car accident is what killed Mark, Lucille's been acting really different towards me. I guess it's different in a good way...she's been really looking out for me, making sure I get to and from work even if we're not working the same shifts, rubbing my shoulder at random times just for comfort and she's slowed way down with the teasing about Alex. I think she knows that the car accident that messed my hips up is the same car accident that killed my husband. She's the only one that knows though, because I haven't told anyone else that I was in a car accident too. She's the only one that knows about me and she doesn't make a big deal of it. She's been quiet about it. "You're practically dating him and you didn't tell us."

"Eh, hush up about it, Kaylee." Lucille gives me that look that tells me she has my back and taps my hands before she walks away. "It slipped her mind. Not everyone is as crazed about the man as some of us around here." I look down at the ground and crack a very slight smile. I appreciate Lucille getting everyone off my case. "Now are you guys done with your cleanups? Because I'm ready to get the hell out of here. It's gonna be a long day for all of us tomorrow and we should all go home." She unties her apron from around her waist and looks at me again. "All done, kiddo?" I nod my head at her.

"Thank you." I whisper to her and she just nods.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Towels..." I mumble under my breath and sift through the beach bag just to make sure I have an ample amount of towels. I'm supposed to be down Jo's house to pick her up in five minutes and I'm nowhere close to getting out the door. The festival started at 1:00 in the afternoon. I told Jo I'd come pick her up at 1:30. I'm pushing 1:30 and I still don't even have the bag packed. I woke Lyla up at 11:00 this morning so she'd have enough time to eat breakfast and get ready for the day's events but for some reason, she fought me. I didn't get her out of bed until 11:45. That left me limited time to get her fed, get her dressed, feed myself and pack a beach bag. I love my daughter to death but today's one of the days I wish I didn't have to deal with her. She's been so bratty and whiny today. First she threw a fit when I tried to get her out of bed, then she threw a fit when I gave her Fruity Pebbles instead of Cocoa Pebbles. When I told her to go upstairs to her room so I could put clothes on her, she went and got on the couch and turned on the TV instead. Then, she was doing her "poop walk" so I had to change her diaper and she wouldn't even let me change her. She's usually so well-behaved for me and today she's being the exact opposite. "Sunblock...swim diapers, floaties...bathing suit..." I cross the things off my mental list as I go through them in the bag. Looks like I've got everything covered. "Lyla, let's go." I pick the bag up off the kitchen counter where I was looking through it at and sling it over my shoulder. She's in the living room watching TV. "Turn off that TV and come on."

I hear the TV shut off and I hear her sandals clopping as she makes her way to the kitchen. I think I deserve a pat on the back for her outfit today. I brushed her hair up into a ponytail and tied it back with a red, white and blue sparkly ribbon I found in her hair barrette box. I put a white tank top on her that has a star-shaped American flag on the front and she wanted to wear a skirt so I found a blue tutu for her to wear in the back of her closet and she has on red sandals. I even stuck a white pacifier in her mouth, just to match the theme. "Uppy." She holds her arms out to me. Before I pick her up, I look through the bag one more time to make sure I stuck my wallet in there. "Dada...uppy..." She stands next to me and taps me on the leg. "Dada... Dada..."

"I will, Lyla!" After I yell at her, she stops tapping me and puts her arms down. I find my wallet in the beach bag and put it back over my shoulder once I see it. I can tell I either scared her or hurt her feelings pretty badly. She looks down at the floor and starts kicking her foot. "You ready?" To let her know I'm not too mad at her, I reach down and mess with the ribbon I stuck in her hair. She nods her head and toddles to the door. I grab her by her arms and pick her up. "...You've been really beating me up all day, you know that Ly?" She nods her head. "I think I deserve a kiss. What do you think?" She puckers her lips and puts them against my cheek. "Thank you. I forgive you." I carry her down the front steps and towards the car. I think we're the last ones on the block to head off to the festival. The rest of the street is relatively quiet for a Wednesday afternoon, which can only mean that everyone is gone already. The entire town of Millerton is going to this festival. For what it's worth, I hope it's nice. It's the first time the town's had anything like this before so I hope it's a good turn out.

I open the back door of the car and strap Lyla into her car seat. "Dada...don't forget my Doedoe...kay? Don't forget her." She's been barking orders at me all day too. It's a shame that I'm a slave to my three year old. I wouldn't have it any other way though. I love her to death so I guess being a slave to her is better than being a slave to just anyone. She must really like Jo, by the way. Ever since Jo babysat her last week, that's all she's been talking about. She's been telling me about the awesome tea party she and Jo had, she told me how bad Jo sucks at playing Epic Mickey on the Wii and she's been calling Jo "her Jojo." It's good to know they really took a liking to each other. "Dada..." She calls my name as soon as I climb into the driver's seat. "You have my...um...my pishuh? The one I drawed for my Doedoe?"

"Yeah, I have your picture baby girl. It's in the bag. Look in there and grab it." She also drew Jo a picture. She drew a picture of her and Jo holding hands but she drew herself really big and Jo really small. I'm in the picture too but for some reason, Jo and Lyla are standing on top of me and I have green facial hair. I don't know if I should be worried about the fact that they're standing on top of my head but you know, she's three so I'll ignore it. She took a really long time to draw that picture. She drew it yesterday while we were watching Doc McStuffins. It took her two episodes to finish the picture. I look both ways before I turn and once the coast is clear, I continue on down the road to get to Jo's house. Lyla's in the backseat looking through the beach bag for her picture. "It's in there, Ly. Keep looking." Since Jo only lives a hop, skip and a jump away from me, I'm at her house in no time. I blare the horn and throw the car in park while I wait for her. "Did you find it?"

"No...I no find it...It not here." She's looking in the bag like her life depends on it. "Daddy, I weally wanna gibbit to her...did you forget it?" I think she might cry. I know I threw the damn picture in there and if she doesn't find it, I'll have a cranky toddler on my hands for the rest of the day. So I unbuckle my seatbelt and turn around to help her. "It not here daddy..." Her voice turns into a whine and her face cracks up. I sift through the towels, the floaties, the swimsuit, her diapers...it's right here. I pluck it out of the bag and hand it to her. "...Oh." She sniffs and rubs her eyes. "Fank you."

"You're welcome, baby girl." I turn back around in my seat and buckle myself back up. I glance out the passenger's side window to see if Jo's coming. Her door is still closed and it doesn't look like she's even in there. Maybe she didn't hear me beep. I press my palm into the horn again. I really hope she didn't stand us up, for Lyla's sake. Lyla's been looking forward to hanging out with Jo ever since she babysat her and I know if Jo doesn't come, she'll be upset all day. It'd suck for me too, if she didn't come. I wouldn't have anyone to talk to all day besides Lyla. I guess I was kind of looking forward to having her come with us too. I lay my hand on the horn again to beep just one more time but before I get a chance to, her front opens up and she walks out of it. She looks...different? I keep my eyes on her as she gets closer to the car. She definitely looks different. She's wearing a pair of light blue jean shorts with strings hanging on the cutoff parts of it. The shorts have holes in them, around her thighs. She has on a black, lacy, see-through tank top and I can see that she's wearing her bathing suit top underneath of it. Her hair is the same, wavy and unruly but her eyes look different...probably because she's wearing makeup.

She opens up the door and climbs right inside the car with us. "Hey." She smiles and reveals something bright green on the side of her teeth. She's chewing gum. She buckles herself in and turns towards the back. "Hi Lyla."

"Here Doedoe...I maked this for you." Lyla hands her the folded up piece of paper. "Here you go."

"Aww, thank you honey." Jo takes it and opens it up. "Awww...that's so sweet. Is that me and you?" Lyla nods her head. "And are we stepping on your daddy's head?" She nods again. "Are we stepping on his head because he was a big fat meanie?" Lyla laughs but nods again. "Alright!" Jo holds her hand out and Lyla high-fives her. "This is going right on my fridge. Thank you sweetheart."

"I'm a big fat meanie, Lyla?" I glance at her through the rear view mirror but put my eyes back on the road. The town looks so dead. You know Millerton is boring when the entire town is vacated to attend a stupid festival. "Okay then...guess what? This big fat meanie isn't buying you ice cream or anything you want at this fair. If you like Jo so much, why don't you go live with her? Since daddy's a big fat meanie."

"No! I yuh you daddy!" She shakes her head and waves her arms. "I sorry, you not mean! You not mean!" Jo's silently laughing to herself and Lyla's trying her hardest to convince me that she didn't mean what she said. "I still get ice cweam, wight daddy?"

"I dunno...I'm a big fat meanie and you stepped on my head..." I turn onto the road that'll take us to the boardwalk. As I suspected, there's hardly anywhere to park in the parking lot. I've never seen the beach parking lot so full before. I circle around for a parking space and as I circle, I can hear the sound of music playing and crowds of people chatting away. "I guess you can have ice cream...but you gotta eat some real food first." I finally find a parking space way at the end of a long line of cars. "Don't I owe you a vanilla ice cream cone? With rainbow sprinkles?" I turn and ask Jo.

"You sure do." When I turn the car off, she unbuckles her seatbelt and opens the car door. "Um, Alex...You know we don't have to stay together the entire time, right? You know you and Lyla can do your own thing, right? You don't have to pal around with me the whole time." She tucks her hair behind her ears and turns her head to look in the direction of the festival. I roll my eyes at her and open up the door to get Lyla and our beach bag out. "Why'd you roll your eyes? I'm just trying to be nice. I'm trying to give you an out here." I hoist Lyla on my hip and pick up our beach bag as well. I'm trying to make it obvious that I'm not listening to her. "You really are an-" I clear my throat to remind her that Lyla is standing right here and she shouldn't cuss at me. "...A really nice person." She fake smiles at me but her eyes tell it all.

"You just sound stupid, that's all." I lock up the car doors and start heading for the entrance. Jo walks right beside me, mirroring my every step. "If I didn't feel like being with you all day, I wouldn't have invited you to come. Don't make it seem like I did you a favor by asking you to come. You're not my charity case Jo. Why's it so hard for you to believe that sometimes I really just want to be your friend? I don't mind being with you all day." She doesn't say anything back to me after that. As we get closer to the actual festival, the music gets way louder and the sound of people talking, laughing and having a good time is more apparent. Across the entrance of the boardwalk is a red, white and blue banner that says "Happy Independence Day!" Lyla's busy tracing circles in my hair and Jo's just looking around. I can't tell who's more nervous between the two. Jo's better at putting up a nervous front though. I can tell by her body language that she's a little bit uncomfortable but she's doing an okay job at hiding it. Lyla on the other hand...she won't even look straight. She's looking back, behind me. "You okay over there, Jo?" I mumble as we walk through the entrance. She squints her eyes and looks at me like she's asking me what I mean. There are people all over the place. I didn't even know Millerton had this many people in it. "You seem nervous..."

"Well, yeah..." She shrugs her shoulders and keeps her pace in stride with mine. "I don't know anybody...and I can't figure out if people are staring at me or you..." She whispers that last part to me. Now that she said something about it, I do notice people staring at us. They're trying to be discreet with their staring but it's so blatantly obvious that they're staring. They couldn't make it more obvious. "Maybe I should go home..." She whispers to herself, not to me but I heard her anyway.

"Why?" I wave at a couple of people I recognize and keep walking. When I wave, obviously the people wave back and that causes Lyla to bury her face in my neck. I rub her back to let her know that it's okay and turn to Jo. "Why would you go home?"

"I...don't know." She sighs and scoots away from me just a little. We were standing a little close to each other and I didn't even realize until she moved. Before I got to know her, I used to think that Jo was a very complex, difficult person to read. But as I started talking to her, I realize figuring her out is a lot like figuring myself out. It doesn't take me long to piece together that she's uncomfortable because people are staring at us, assuming that we're a couple. That's why she stopped standing so close to me. She doesn't want people to think that we're an item and that's exactly what people are thinking, I know the people from Millerton all too well. "What do you wanna do first?" She rests against a street lamppost that has red, white and blue ribbons tied all around it.

I look around to see if I can decide what we should do first. I wasn't expecting all of this. I was just expecting a crappy little festival on the boardwalk with games, food and music. Well there are tons of games, good music and lots of food, but there are also rides. There's a ferris wheel turning around and around, a couple mini rollercoasters, a tilt-a-whirl and a ride that picks you up and goes around in a circle. The lines for the rides are ridiculous though. There are people playing down on the beach and people deep in the ocean water. I really wasn't expecting this to be as nice as it cracked up to be. "...Ly, what do you wanna do first?" I rub her back. "You wanna go swimming? You wanna go on some rides? Get some food? Play a game? What do you wanna do?" I glance at Jo. She's leaning against the boardwalk railing, looking down at the beach below and mouthing something to herself. Or maybe she's singing. Yeah, she's singing. Lyla points to the ocean and I nod. "Jo, come here..." She turns around. "Come here."

"Baby you a song, you make me wanna roll my windows down and cruise..." She walks over to me, still singing silently to herself. Lyla's looking at her like she's crazy so Jo grabs both of her hands and gently sways her hips from side to side with the music. "Down a back road blowin' stop signs down the middle every little farm town with yoooou..." Lyla laughs at her and moves her hands in tune with Jo. "What'd you need, Alex?"

"Lyla wants to go get in the water. Are you coming?"

"Mhm." She nods her head and smiles at Lyla. Lyla's still doing her little hand dance while she's in my arms. She and Jenna used to dance together all the time. Like when Jenna would be in the kitchen baking, she'd always turn the radio on and Lyla would be in the kitchen with her and every song that came on, Jenna would put Lyla on her hip and dance with her. Lyla used to like to dance a lot. I haven't seen her dance at all since Jenna died. Crazy that Jo could make her want to dance again...

 **X X X**

"Lyla, don't you dare...put it down." She had a handful of sand by her mouth and she was about to eat it. I don't know what it is with sand and why she feels the need to eat it but every time she's in the sand, she tries to eat it. "That's cucka. You know better." I point my finger at her and give her the look and she just knows. She puts the sand back in her sand pile and digs around with her shovel. "If you eat sand, you're gonna get little sand crabs in your belly and they're gonna be in there eating up all your insides and daddy's not gonna help you. So don't eat sand." She looks at me with her "sorry" eyes and starts digging a hole. She's waist deep in the sand like she always is and as usual, she's building a mound of sand on her lap. She and Jo made a pretty neat sandcastle a little while ago. It was really cool too. It had a moat, windows, a leaf flag...it was pretty neat. Jo's pretty creative. "What is it with little kids and the need to taste everything? It's gross. You know how many bugs are in the sand? Every time I bring her here, she tries to eat it. You would think she'd learn by now. One day, I'm gonna let her. I'm gonna let her see how nasty it tastes...maybe then she'll stop."

Jo laughs softly and continues gazing out into the ocean water. None of us have actually gone in the water yet but we're going to eventually. I'm trying to wait until Lyla wants to go in. Right now, Lyla's content with building sand mountains, I'm content with watching her and Jo seems content with sunbathing. "I think that's how they learn about stuff...they just want to taste it. See if it's food...or if it's edible. I guess it's just a little kid thing." She's sitting next to me on her own purple beach towel, resting on her elbows. Her feet are buried in the sand and she has a pair of sunglasses on. Her bathing suit is all black with silver sparkles all over it and silver charms hanging off the tied ends. Seeing her in a bathing suit made me realize how thin she truly is. She's a little person. Just like her arms, her stomach, her back and her legs look like someone dotted her up with a brown marker. She has a bigger one on her chest and one on her face that really stands out in the sun. "This is so much better than Massachusetts." She sighs and digs her feet deeper into the sand.

"Yeah, but at least you guys had weather variation. It's nice all year round here...get's kind of annoying." I follow her lead and rest back on my elbows too, instead of sitting cross-legged on the towel. I stretch my legs out and lie back, propped up on my elbows. I should try and tan too. I don't make it a point to lay out and tan like chicks do, but I have an awkward tan from the last time I brought Lyla to the beach and I need to even it out if I'm gonna be out here shirtless. I guess it doesn't matter how weird my tan is...chicks are still drooling over me no matter what. I've caught five women staring at me and two with their mouths gaped open since we've been here. "What'd you leave Massachusetts for anyway? Just needed a new environment?"

"Something like that." She balances on one elbow and reaches up with one hand to move her sunglasses to the top of her head. Once her sunglasses are off her face, she literally flops down on her back and lies flat on her towel. Her hips stick out when she lays flat and I don't know if I consider that hot or gross. She looks up at the sky and bends her knees up. "Got on a bus one day...ended up in Florida and decided to stay." She sighs again and holds her arms up in the air. She opens and closes her fingers and stares at them for some reason. I can't stop looking at the way her hips stick out when she lays down flat. She's not disgustingly skinny or anything like that. She's actually pretty normal looking and her thighs have meat on them it's just weird how her hips jut out. Something else about her hips isn't right though. They look uneven to me. Her left hip looks like it's up about an inch higher than her right one. "You ever get tired of people staring at you like that?" She turns her head and looks at me, which forces me to stop concentrating on her weird hips. She puts her arms down flat at her sides.

"Staring at me like what?" I shield my eyes from the sun and look down at her.

"Like they're starving cheetahs in the jungle and you're a slab of cow meat." She looks away from me again and back up at the sky. "...Must get annoying though...or maybe it's degrading." She turns the sarcasm off and gets serious again. "Doesn't it bother you though? Especially when they look at you like that when you have Lyla with you?"

I shrug. "I just let them look. All they're doing is looking, really. I would have a problem if they were looking _and_ touching. I don't really care that they look." Her face falls just slightly and I can tell that's not the answer she was looking for. "...I guess it could be annoying at times though." I try my answer again and this time, she turns her head again and looks at me. "They used to look a lot even when Jenna was alive. It's gotten worse since she died though."

"Jenna?" She raises her eyebrows.

"Yeah." I nod. "My wife."

"You never told me her name." She looks up at the sky again. "She was really beautiful. I...saw pictures of her in your house when I was watching Lyla. She was really pretty."

I just nod my head and run my fingers through my hair. "...So what's the deal with your husband?" Her face falls again but 10xs more dramatically this time. I can tell she doesn't want to talk about her husband and there's a part of me that understands why she wouldn't want to talk about him because I hate talking about Jenna but there's another part of me that doesn't care. That part of me wants to dig a little deeper into Jo as a person. She seems really, really guarded and she doesn't let me in on much. She kind of seems like a robot at times. "How'd he die?"

"Car accident." She's really short with me.

"Okay and...what was he like? What was his name?"

"Mark." Short again.

I sigh. "Oookay, new subject." I offer and from the corner of my eye, I see her chest shoot up and relax back down. She sighed, probably in relief. I think the reason she doesn't want to talk about her husband is deeper than the reason I don't want to talk about Jenna. Most of the time, I don't want to talk about Jenna because I miss her like hell and I don't like reliving her memory when it still hurts this bad. But for Jo, it seems like her reasoning goes beyond that. It's genuinely an uncomfortable thing for her to talk about. It's kind of like I'm putting her in the hot seat when I ask her simple questions. Is she hiding something? I knew something was weird about how she just up and fled to Florida one day. She had to leave for a reason, right? I don't know if I'll ever figure that out though. "So..." I glance over at her but she's still looking up at the sky. "Why...didn't you have any kids with him? Didn't get the chance to?"

She sighs again but this time, she has some gruff to it. It's like she's hardcore annoyed. "What is this, Alex? 20 questions about Jo?" She looks at me but her eyebrows are wrinkled and she looks mad. "I'm not playing this game. I don't want to."

"It's not a game?" I wrinkle my brows back at her. She's a little snappy today, I'll say. "I was just wondering why you never had kids. You're good with Lyla, you seem like you'd be someone that would want to have children, you seem like someone that would be a good parent...I was just wondering why it never worked out for you before your husband died. Am I not allowed to ask questions? Is this supposed to be a one-sided friendship? If that's even what this is..."

"Sorry." She mumbles and I can tell she really didn't want to apologize to me. "...I do.." She starts talking but she retracts her statement. "I _did_ want to have a baby at one point." She sits up again and folds her legs. She rests her elbows on her knees and gazes out into the ocean water yet again. "Just wasn't meant for me to have one, I guess." She shrugs it off like it's not a big deal but that front she puts up doesn't fool me. It might fool a bunch of other people that think she's some kind of hard ass but it doesn't fool me. Her not being able to have a baby is a huge deal for her. I can tell. "Was Lyla planned?" She deflects the attention off herself and puts it back on me. I won't push her anymore.

"Sort of." I take a look at the lady in question. She's up to her chest in sand and she's in all her glory. She's smacking the sand with her hands to pack it down and just adding more and more. "We weren't preventing it but we weren't trying either. We wanted to have a kid. She was wanted, very much wanted. We talked about it and we knew it was what we wanted so Jenna stopped taking her birth control...and it happened. We weren't planning her but we weren't trying to stop it either."

"How'd your wife find out she was pregnant?" She sounds like she's not in the least bit interested in what I have to say and she's not even looking at me while I'm talking but then again, Jo's the type that wouldn't talk if she wasn't interested so in a sense, she must be a little bit interested.

"She missed her period and took a test...the usual." I smirk just remembering how excited she was when the test popped up positive. I was more nervous than excited but as soon as we got the first ultrasound, I was just so happy. The nerves went away and I was ecstatic.

"Did she feel the guppies?" She turns her head and looks at me with a slight smile. I raise eyebrow and it's like she just realized she made a fatal error. Her mouth hangs open and her face is worrisome. "I..." She shakes her head. "I heard that when women feel pregnant...sometimes they feel flutters in their bellies...kind of like guppies swimming around in there." She explains. "At least that's what I heard..." Something tells me that isn't something she _heard._

"She said it felt like something was swimming around in there sometimes." I decide not to push the issue. I think his conversation has the potential to turn sour so I'll just nip it in the bud before it gets out of hand. "You wanna go swim for a little bit now?" She nods her head. "Hey little sand monster..." I turn to Lyla and she looks up from her sand pile and smiles at me. "You wanna go swimming now?" She nods her head and smiles at me a little harder. I look at Jo again and she's picking herself up off the ground. Her back is facing me so I have no choice but to look at it and I can't help but notice that she has pretty deep back dimples. Right above her butt, in her lower back, she has two deep dimples. But right next to those dimples are two pretty nasty scars. The two scars mirror each other, they're both about three inches long and two inches above her back dimples. They're both horizontal. I'm a doctor...and it looks like she's had a hip replacement or two.

But she's only 29 so that's not likely.


	19. Electric

I lean down to pick up my purple towel and wrap it around my body. We had to have just spent about an hour in the water, maybe a little longer. To be honest, I wouldn't mind if that's all we did. If there wasn't an entire festival up on the boardwalk with food, games and rides for us to attend, I wouldn't mind because I just had the time of my life in the water with Alex and Lyla. I'm happy that I had a good time with the two of them because I was starting to think that this trip would end up being a bust. Alex is incredibly nosy and he was starting to really annoy me with his constant questions and his blatant disregard for the fact that I just don't want to talk about some things. I was beginning to think that I was going to end up snapping out on him and the rest of the day would be awkward but he backed way off my case and we actually had a lot of fun together, the three of us. At first, we stayed in the shallow end of the water so Lyla could get used to the water and stuff and when she was ready, we took her into the deeper ends. She spent most of the time in the water on my hip and the two of us kept splashing Alex with water. He eventually got sick of it and splashed us back so we ended up having a water fight and of course, Lyla and I won. Before the water fight though, I was walking though the crystal clear water with Lyla on my hip and we were looking at the fish swimming in the water below us. I learned that she really likes animals. She was telling me exactly what each fish was and that surprised me. She knew what a sea turtle was, she knew what a goldfish was, what a jellyfish was...she's really smart.

So I'd say my first trip to the beach was a success. I can't believe that I had never actually been to a beach before today. I grew up in New Jersey, around the Jersey shore and everything and I've never been to a beach until today. I've really been missing out because the beach is awesome. I dry my face off with my towel and tuck it underneath my armpit so it'll stay up. I've also been peed on for the first time today. I guess Alex either forgot to put a swim diaper on Lyla or figured she didn't need one and I guess in a sense, she didn't really need a swim diaper if all we were going to be doing is swimming in the ocean. First of all, she would tell someone if she had to poop—she wouldn't just go without a diaper on. Second of all, her swimsuit has a net lining in it that would catch it if she actually did poop. And thirdly, since all she would do is pee on herself, she didn't need a diaper because billions of people piss in the ocean. But she peed on my hip. I was holding her on my hip and her legs were wrapped around me and all of a sudden, my hip got hot. I asked her if she peed on me and she nodded her head. I'm not mad about it though. It's just pee and it's Lyla's pee. If it was someone else's pee, I'd be pissed off (or on, rather) but since it's Lyla's, I don't mind.

"Do you need help with her?" I turn towards Alex and slip my sandals back on. He's kneeling down on his towel and rummaging through their beach bag. Lyla's standing next to him and she's shivering. Her long brown hair is dripping all down her back and her teeth are chattering. She's holding her arms out and watching her dad, patiently waiting for him to hand her a towel or something to keep her from shivering so much. I hold my towel up and walk over towards the two of them. "Alex? You need help?" After being in the water for about an hour or so, Alex decided that it was time for Lyla to get out and get something to eat. He told me I could stay down here on the beach while he and Lyla went to go eat and they'd come back but I'm kind of hungry myself so I just got out with them.

"Nah, I'm just trying to find her shorts. I don't think we're gonna come back down here so I want to put her clothes back on her." He pulls out a pair of red shorts as opposed to the blue tutu she came here in. "Come here, Ly. Let daddy take your swimsuit off." Since he said he doesn't think we're going to come back down here to the beach, I pick my own clothes up off the sand and shake them to brush them off. I scrub my towel along my bottom half to dry myself as best as I can and pull my shorts over my damp swimsuit bottoms. It's so hot out here that my hair is almost dry and my swimsuit is almost dry too. It's hot as hell out here today. I drop my towel and shrug my tank top back over my head as well. Alex is sitting down on his towel and pulling Lyla's floaties off her arms so I just sit down next to them and wait. When I was running around in the water with Alex and Lyla, if looks could kill, I would be so dead. Women were glaring at me, rolling their eyes and just drooling over Alex. It annoyed the hell out of me at first but after a while, I just didn't care anymore. I know the truth. I know that Alex and I are just friends and as long as I know that, I don't give a crap about what anyone else thinks.

"No, daddy!" Alex starts to pull down the straps of Lyla's pink and yellow swimsuit but she smacks at his hands and steps away from him. It doesn't take long to figure out the reason why she doesn't want him to take off her swimsuit is because there are a bunch of other people around. Until today, I didn't realize exactly how shy Lyla is around other people. She'll literally shut down and stop talking altogether when there are too many people around her and I didn't know that until today. "No..." She looks around, still waving her hands for Alex not to touch her.

"You want me to take her to the ladies' room?" I stop towel drying my own hair and fold up the damp towel. Alex looks at me and motions towards the bathrooms with his head. I glance over at the bathrooms and see that the lines are all the way out the door. "Oh..." I open my own towel right back up and walk towards her and Alex. "Lyla...Jojo will cover you while daddy dresses you..okay?" I get down on my knees and hold my towel up to create a curtain around her. Lyla stops waving her hands eventually lets him pull the straps down on her swimsuit. Before he takes it completely off of her, he dries her chest off with a towel first. I think it's kind of cute how modest she is about other people seeing her body. Most kids her age take the opportunity to be naked and run with it but as a component of her shyness, she's completely against it. Alex pulls her white tank top over her head and helps her stick her arms through the holes. He takes off the rest of her swimsuit and dries her butt and her "peach" as she calls it, off with the towel again. He opens up a pull-up and sticks her legs in it. "All done." I take my towel curtain down and fold it back up. "I'll finish her, Alex. You can get yourself dressed." He nods at me.

"Thanks, Jo." He wrings out Lyla's swimsuit and tosses it in a plastic bag. "I'm sticking your towel in the bag with ours, okay?" I nod and hold Lyla's shorts open for her to step into them. She holds onto my shoulder and climbs into her shorts. I pick up the brush Alex set out and drag it gently through her hair. I brush her hair up into a ponytail, including her bangs, and tie it back with the same ribbon he put in it. I help her put her sandals back on too and when we're finished, I pick her up and look at Alex again. He just put on his black tank top and left his damp swimming trunks on. "You wanna come to daddy or you wanna stay with Jojo?" Lyla puts her head on my shoulder and makes it clear that she wants to stay with me. "Alright, let's go get something to eat." I don't think me toting his daughter around on the boardwalk is a good idea, especially for the constant spectators Alex draws but who am I to make Lyla go lay on his shoulder when I'm clearly the one she wants to lay on?

Carrying Lyla in my arms, I follow Alex up the steps that lead back onto the boardwalk and it's festivities. It looks like there's even more people here than the first time we were up on the boardwalk, if that's even possible. People are walking around in their swimsuits, carrying prizes they won from the games they played, slurping ice cream cones and just downright having a good time. We walk past an empty stage and I guess they're supposed to put on a show on the stage in a few hours, at least that's what the sign on the stage says. I don't know exactly where I'm going so I just follow Alex for the most part. On my shoulder, Lyla moves her head a little and makes it so she's looking behind me instead of forward as we're walking. Alex turns into a building with bright lights and glass doors so I follow him. I take one hand off Lyla's body and feel around in my back pocket to make sure I still have money in there. I do. I've never been to this place before but I can already tell that I can't afford to eat here. I think I'm just gonna get the cheapest thing on the menu or something because I can't afford this and I already know I can't. I only have my measly $54 paycheck in my back pocket, all the rest of my money is at home in my sock drawer. Still and yet, I follow Alex into line.

"What do you want, Lyla?" He taps Lyla on her back and makes her face forward instead of facing backwards. "They have hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries, chicken...they have spaghetti, ravioli...what do you want?" Lyla looks up at the menu as if she can read. "What do you want, Ly?" He asks her again. "You want chicken and french fries? Hot dog and french fries? Hamburger and french fries? You want some spaghetti and garlic bread? Raviolis?" Lyla scratches her head. "Daddy's getting some spaghetti and garlic bread. Do you just want to eat some of mine?" She shakes her head. "Then what do you want, baby girl? Daddy doesn't have all day."

"Um..." Lyla scratches behind her ear and looks at the menu again. "...Ticken." She puts her head back on my shoulder again and swings her feet.

"Hi, Alex." The woman standing behind the register greets him when it's his turn in line and I can literally see the drool lining her lips. She's doing that fake smile with the fake sultry voice and the unrealistic eyelash bat. She flips her blonde hair over her shoulder and flashes him her crooked but very shiny white teeth. "What can I get for you today?" She leans forward against her register and squeezes her arms to her sides to make her boobs stick out and look bigger. I roll my eyes. This girl can't be serious. He's not THAT attractive. I mean...his muscles are pretty sexy...and he has a nice chest...and the stubble on his face when he doesn't shave is kinda hot...but he's NOT drool-worthy. I tune out whenever Alex starts telling her his order. She must not know how pathetic she looks. She called him by his name, as if they're lifelong buddies or something and the way she's batting her eyelashes...give me a break. "Is there anything else I can get for you?" Her eyes stray away from his face and down to his waistline. She doesn't even try to hide the fact that she just licked her lips. Lyla lifts her head up from my shoulder and stares at the girl.

"Jo, you want something? I'll grab it for you." Alex turns to me and he honestly looks unfazed by this woman's gawking. I don't understand how he could care less about her throwing herself at him like this. Even _I'm_ annoyed by it so I don't understand how he's not. "You want like...a drink or something? I know you said you're not hungry down at the beach...you thirsty?" I'm listening to what he's saying to me but I'm completely tuned into the cashier's face. She's looking at me like I'm a fly that just landed and took a dump on her piece of bread.

"Yeah...um...I actually am hungry. Can you grab me a hamburger and some french fries?" I don't know what just happened. In my mind, I told myself to politely decline and tell him that I'd pay for my own food. I swear I told myself to say that. But when I saw the way the girl was looking at me and when I went to actually say it, something else came out. I immediately bite down on my lip. I should've swallowed my damn tongue. I don't know what came over me though. "I'm gonna take Lyla and find a seat to sit down. Just come find us when you're done." He nods at me like me asking him to pay for my food is the most natural thing I could've said to him and takes his wallet out of the beach bag. I scoot Lyla up on my hip so I don't drop her and carry her over to an empty booth. Her little eyebrows are furrowed and her lip is poked out and she looks PISSED. I put her down in the seat. "What's the matter, honey? What happened?"

"Bitch." She just says it like it's something she says every day and shakes her head while looking towards the register. My jaw drops but I hurry up and pick it back up. She just said "bitch"? Clear as day, she just said it... is she calling _me_ a bitch? I don't know what to say to her. I literally don't know what to say. It's not my place to discipline her and it's surely not my place to ask her what I did to make her call me a bitch. But she just...said it. Like I really pissed her off. All I did was ask her what was wrong. I sit down across from her and put my head down on the table, trying to think of what I'm gonna say to Alex. I mean, I don't know if I should tell on her. "Leave my dada lone. Her...her...her TUPID!" Oh she's not talking about me?!

"You don't like when girls look at your daddy, do you?" She shakes her head real hard. "...I don't like it much either, sweetheart so I know you don't like it, but we shouldn't use that word. That's a bad, bad word." I reach across the table and hold her hands. "Promise Jojo you won't say that word again?"

"What? Tupid?" She tilts her head and I shake mine. "Oh...bitch?"

"Yeah...that. Don't say that. That's a bad word." I glance back over at the register and see Alex accepting the tray from the girl. The girl asks him something and Alex says "no" and shakes his head. He then proceeds to tell her something else but I'm not that good at reading lips so I don't know exactly what it is that he said. The woman smirks at him and says something again. Alex nods his head and turns away, carrying the tray back over to where Lyla and I are sitting. "Don't say that around your daddy, okay?" She nods. Alex makes it back over to us and puts the tray down on the table. "Hey, thanks for that..." I reach in my back pocket. "How much did mine come to?"

"Jo, I said I'd pay..." He sits down next to Lyla and distributes the plates to whom they belong. He hands me my plate and hands Lyla hers and keeps his. "I didn't know what you liked to drink, so I just got you a Coke. Is that cool?" He starts pulling Lyla's chicken tenders apart to make the pieces smaller. I nod my head and shove my money back into my pocket. I thought about arguing with him, insisting that he let me pay my own portion for the food but I've tried arguing with Alex over money before and he's almost as stubborn as I am so I don't really think there's a point in doing that. He pokes a straw into a juice box and hands it to Lyla. "So, does me buying you lunch cancel out the fact that I owe you an ice cream cone?" He picks up a piece of his garlic bread and holds it by his mouth with a cynical smirk on his face. I narrow my eyes at him, shake my head and pick up my hamburger.

"Dada, you tell that girl to leave you lone?" Lyla dips a piece of chicken in her ketchup and holds it by her mouth. "Her tupid." I silently applaud her in my mind for listening to me and not using the word "bitch" again. I think she knows what the word "bitch" means but I really don't think she ever knew that it was a bad word until I told her. "Her need to go way."

"Yeah, Ly...I told her to leave me alone, baby doll." He puts his lips to Lyla's head and rubs her arms. "You're the only woman in my life, girly." I can't tell if Alex really wanted to say that or if he felt like he had to. The way he said it, it sounded a little bit rehearsed. I'm trying to determine if he really means that. He seems kind of broken down and beaten but maybe there is a small part of him that's ready to move on from his wife's death. Maybe Lyla won't let him do that? I don't know. I just pick up a french fry and pop it in my mouth. "Isn't that the way you like it?" Lyla puts her head on Alex's arm and chomps away on her chicken nugget. "You like being the only girl, huh?"

Lyla nods. "...Dada." She looks up at him. "...Doedoe's a wibben in um...in your life. Wight Dada?" I silently choke on my french fry. I smack myself on the chest as I cough and feel my eyes watering. I wasn't expecting that. I'm not exactly sure Lyla knows what Alex meant by that but I know that she didn't mean it the way Alex meant it. Alex meant it as in, Lyla's the only important female in his life. Lyla meant it as in, I'm clearly a girl and I'm clearly in Alex's life. It's not the same thing. Still coughing, I pick up the soda he bought me and take a sip of it to wash the fry I'm choking on down. "Wight?"

Alex looks down at Lyla with a grin on his face. I can tell he's thinking the same way I'm thinking. He's thinking that Lyla doesn't get what he meant when he said that. But she's three so I guess she wouldn't understand what being the only woman in someone's life means. He looks up at me and gives me that "we're on the same page" kind of look. "Yeah, Ly..." He rubs her arms again. "Jojo's a woman in my life too."

 **X X X**

"So what did you and that um...cashier girl talk about when me and Lyla walked away?" I stick my tongue out and catch the vanilla ice cream running off my cone before it can roll down to my hand and make my hand all sticky. He chuckles and ignores the question, which makes me roll my eyes. After we got done eating our food, we took Lyla on the tilt-a-whirl ride and she absolutely loved it. When we got off, we went to go take her on the ferris wheel but we ran into Alex's dad and his date. Alex's dad's date seemed really interested in Lyla so when his dad asked, Alex let him take Lyla off his hands for a little while. He's supposed to meet us at the ferris wheel at 7:30 to give her back. Alex wants to be with her when they light the fireworks. "...You know Lyla called her a bitch." He gasps and I start laughing. "Yes she did. When I took her back to the table...she looked over and saw you still talking to that girl and she looked at her and she was just like... 'bitch'." We both start cracking up laughing after I tell the story. "I thought she was calling me a bitch at first I was like WOAH! But she explained...and she was like that girl is stupid. I was still in shock though. She said it so causally too. Like it's part of her everyday vocabulary."

"My daughter's a mess." He shakes his head and takes a bite out of his own chocolate ice cream cone. We've really just been walking around and talking ever since we dropped Lyla with his dad. Surprisingly, Alex's dad is the only familiar face I've seen so far. I thought for sure I would've seen Lucille, Luke, Kaylee or Macy already but nope. I haven't seen any of them. "You really wanna know what me and that cashier were talking about?" I turn my head and look at him, keeping the pace we're walking at slow and even. "...We were talking about you." He takes another bite out of his cone. He doesn't even look at me. He remains looking forward as we walk but somehow, he knows that I'm wondering what the hell they could've been talking about me for. He knows that my eyebrows are wrinkled and my mouth is in a grimace. "She asked me if we were together...I told her no. She asked me why I was with you...I told her none of her business." I roll my eyes and stop looking at him. "She told me Lyla was cute and I said thanks..."

"I guess I could've imagined I was the topic of conversation, she looked at me like I pissed in her Cheerios." All of a sudden, I don't want my ice cream cone anymore. We walk past a trashcan and I toss it in there. I feel bad because he's the one that bought it for me but I can't eat it. I'm too annoyed to eat it. "Never did I think being your friend would be this stressful but being your friend is literally ruining my life." I slip my thumbs through the belt loops of my shorts and continue walking. "I can't take the stares, the gawking...I'm just your friend and it sucks."

"Well geez, way to be nice to me." He throws his own ice cream cone away and keeps walking. "It's not all fun and games for me either, you know. You should hear some of the stuff people have to say about you."

"ME?! What could anyone possibly have to say about me?! Nobody knows me!" I can't help but wonder if he's just making that up to make it seem like being my friend sucks just as bad for him as it sucks for me. Nobody says anything about me. Nobody even knows me. What could they say? Nothing.

"They know what you look like." He shrugs. "They think you're really hot. I've heard it a few times today...once from my dad." I burst out in laughter and shake my head. "What? I'm not even joking around, Jo. I'm serious. People think you're hot, so maybe you should embrace it. You know our one neighbor? That lives in the brown house? He called you 'a hot little piece of ass' but you know, I never said that. I don't pay attention to that." He shrugs once again. "If I wanna be your friend, I'm gonna be your friend. I've only known you for three weeks but I think you're a cool person. Sorry if being my friend is ruining your life."

"I didn't mean it like that, Alex. You know that." I nudge him with my elbow. "I guess I'd be lying if I said I didn't see the way men were staring at me in my bathing suit. I kinda just wanted to think that they were staring at you though." I giggle. He looks at me like I just said the sickest thing ever to him. His eye twitches and he shakes his head. "What? I have a gay friend that wants to...knock down your barnyard doors." I smirk just thinking about Luke's comment. "...I guess I can't really blame people for thinking we're a couple though." We come to the end of the boardwalk and I know he's probably going to just want to turn around and walk back down it again but I need a break. My hips are starting to bug me, despite the fact that I popped an Aspirin after I ate. So to make it look like I just wanted something better to do than walk, I put my hands against the wooden railing of the boardwalk and hoist myself up. I sit facing the ocean and look out into the horizon. Just like I was hoping, he decides to join me. "You look around and there are people holding hands, kissing and all that. And then there's us."

"Yeah, I guess I could understand." He lifts himself up and sits on the railing next to me. People are still playing around on the beach down below and splashing around in the water. It's somewhere around 5 or 6:00 in the evening so the heat died down quite a bit but it's still humid enough to want to be in the water. I rest my arms against the railing above me, since there's a series of three wooden bars to the railing and we're sitting on the second one. I put my chin against my arms and swing my feet. It's quiet between the two of us and it's serene, the only sound is the waves breaking on the shore and the music playing in the background. "Hey Jo..." Of course, he breaks the peacefulness. I rest my head flat against my arms and look at him. "You've seriously never been to a beach before?" I shake my head. "...No beaches growing up in Massachusetts, I guess." He mumbles.

"I didn't grow up in Massachusetts, Mr. Know It All." I pick my head up and resume looking out into the clear ocean waters. "I'm a Jersey girl. I grew up in New Jersey, about three hours away from the Jersey shore." I stop swinging my legs. "...My mom...she was a single mom, raising me. So we never really had a lot of money..never enough to vacation to the beach. I went on vacation one time in my entire life and that was for my tenth birthday. My mom saved her Christmas bonus for five months and took me to Six Flags for three days." I blankly start swinging my legs again. "My mom tended to overcompensate for me not having a dad. She constantly blamed herself for me growing up without one but you know, it wasn't her fault the bastard walked out on his one year old."

"Sometimes I wish my dad would've had the balls to walk away from my mom." His voice is solemn and gruff. I think we're about to have a heart-to-heart conversation. "Mom's been bipolar since she was a teenager, but I don't really think it's an excuse to act like as big a bitch as she does. You know how confusing that crap is for little kids? One moment she'd be baking cookies with us and the next, she's slamming my baby brother into a wall. It's confusing and kind of scary when you don't know which mommy you're gonna wake up to. I wish my dad had the balls to take me and the rest of us away from her."

"You have brothers and sisters?" I raise my brows. I was always under the impression that he was an only child. He always made it seem that way, at least. He never talked about pawning Lyla off on her aunts or her uncles so I just assumed he had nobody else but me and his dad since his mom's batshit crazy. "How many?"

"Just two. One sister, one brother. Aaron and Amber. I'm the oldest. Aaron's 24, Amber's 22. They don't live around here anymore." He sighs. "Truth be told, I wish I didn't either."

"Then why do you?" I turn my head and look at him again. "If they got outta here, why didn't you?"

"Jenna wanted to stay." He shrugs. "I always wanted to go work up in St. Jude's...you know, the big children's research hospital up in Tennessee?" I nod. "I wanted to go work up in there. I wanted to go up there and work with the doctors that try to cure cancer and stuff. I actually applied for a fellowship there...got accepted and everything. Wish I would've gone." He sighs.

"So why didn't you go? If you got the job, I mean..."

"Jenna got pregnant with Lyla and Arizona...my boss...she offered me a fellowship with her instead. So it was either, uproot my pregnant wife from the house we just bought or stay and build my life in Millerton." He starts swinging his legs too. "I don't regret staying. I don't regret putting down roots here with Jenna. I do wonder though. I wonder what would've happened if I had gone to St. Jude's."

"It's not fun to spend the rest of your life wondering." I can relate to that. "I sometimes wonder where I'd be if I hadn't given up becoming an actuary. I wanted to be an actuary so bad. I just found that so cool that you could use math to calculate how someone's stock is gonna do. I wanted to get my degree and work for..." I grin. He's probably gonna laugh at me. "I wanted to work for an insurance company. I wanted to be the one to calculate pensions and statement claims and eventually, I wanted to open up my own insurance company. I love actuary science." I sigh too. "Easier to be a teacher though...and I didn't need a six-figure salary...couldn't have a better job or a better degree than Mark...that was a big no."

"Who told you that?"

I knew that was coming. Alex is a curious person so I just knew that he was going to ask for details. I close my eyes and try to tell myself that oversharing is okay. He's my friend. "His parents." I mumble through clenched teeth. "He was...he had a degree in Economics and Liberal Arts...duel majored from Harvard. And when he brought me home to his parents, he told them that I was the one he wanted to marry. Told them I was a math major and wanted to be an actuary. And they were just basically like...hell no. I couldn't be more successful than their precious Mark so if I wanted to marry their son, I had to settle for something lesser. I like kids...love kids, actually. So why not be a math teacher?"

"What was your husband like, Jo?" He turns his head too and we're eye to eye.

"Why?" I raise my eyebrow.

"Just wondering...because somehow, I don't think that's what a marriage is supposed to be like. I'm not saying me and Jenna's marriage was perfect, but I would never ask her to limit her potential based off what my parents wanted. That's extremely unfair to you. So I was just wondering."

"I know what it sounds like." I bite my lip. "He was a good man though. He always put me before himself. He would've given anything just to make sure I was okay and he loved me to death. It's just..." I blow a huff of air out of my mouth. "Nobody says no to Cynthia and Lawrence Warren. They're Massachusetts royalty, literally. Money coming out of their ears, big time stock investors, Lawrence is a big time prosecutor in Massachusetts. They have MONEY, Alex. And if whatever they say goes. It's bad enough he married me when they didn't want him to. His parents hated my guts, simply because I'm a nothing from New Jersey. My mom was a single mother, a Chemistry teacher which to them, is lower than pig shit. I'm a poor Democrat that made it through the Ivy League on nothing but a scholarship. I didn't fit into their perfect mold. Mark wasn't supposed to marry lesser than him and he certainly wasn't supposed to have a wife that made more money as an actuary than he made as mayor and chairman of Chamberlain, wealthiest city in the state of Massachusetts." I sigh. "But he was a really good man. He always went to war over me. He gave anything to make sure I felt comfortable. He was royalty...and I was his queen."

"Why'd you marry him though? If you two were so much different...if you knew that his parents were such hardasses, why'd you even tie the knot?"

"I didn't know. When we started dating, I didn't know. I just thought he was someone I had business class with. He was attractive and he showed me interest and I liked him too. He always told me his parents were paying to put him through college so I always figured he came from money but to Mark...that was never important, you know? He never made it a point to tell me about his money. He never mentioned it, he never bragged about it and he surely didn't let the money impact the kind of person he was. And then he actually took me home to his parents. And by that time, I was in way too deep. I was in love with him."

"I know what that's like." He mumbles. "Love's like that. Hits you when you least expect it, sinks it's hooks into you deep, doesn't let you go and bites you in the ass." He clears his throat and again, it's quiet between the two of us. "Can I ask you something, Jo?" I look away from him and roll my eyes. What? Me opening up about how much Mark's parents hated my guts isn't enough for him? He wants more? I don't mind talking to Alex but sometimes he's so pushy! "...Lyla's birthday is coming up." I feel my nerves settle. Part of me feels bad for snapping out internally about how pushy he is when he's not even asking me another personal question. Since it's not a personal question, I look at him again and wait for what he's going to say. "And I was thinking...I-I'm taking her to Disney World, down there in Orlando. She doesn't know..." I crack a smile. I remember Lyla calling him a big fat meanie for having to work on her birthday and here he's planning a trip to Disney World. I still don't know what that has to do with me though. "I talked to my dad about it and he thinks I should have someone...a female...with me to dress Lyla in the bathrooms and relate to her on a girl level. And the more I think about it, I guess he's right." I feel my jaw drop. He's not about to ask me... "I was wondering if maybe you wanted to come? I know you have to think about it and I understand that. But I just thought I should ask early just in case you say yes and you have to take off your work days..." He scratches his head. "We're going on the 13th and we won't be back until the 20th, if you're interested...just let me know, I guess..."

"Alex, I'd love to. But there's no way I could afford to do that." I shake my head. "I have to w-"

"I'll cover everything." He interrupts me. "I already did an estimate for three people and it'll only be $2,400, everything included. Everything included." Is he nuts?! "Please just think about it, Jo. I don't have anyone else I could ask. I'm not speaking to my mother and every other female I talk to, my daughter hates. You're the only person I could ask and Lyla loves you. You're like...her best friend. Just consider it. That $2,400 includes everything. The park entrance, the stay at the hotel, the fast passes, everything except spending money and I can cover that too. I already figured I could get one hotel room with two beds...you in one bed and me and Lyla in the other. Just tell me you'll think about it."

"Alex, I can't." I shake my head very slowly. "I can't do that. Do you understand that you're asking me to let you pay for a trip to DISNEY WORLD? I...I can't let you do that. I just can't. I really can't let you do that. I can't. I'm so sorry but I can't let you do that. I'm SO sorry."

"I knew you'd say no." He mumbles and rolls his eyes but he doesn't sound too upset. He just seems like he's disappointed. "I already knew you'd say no. I just thought I'd ask anyway. I hoped you'd say yes...but I knew you'd say no. I knew you wouldn't let me." He runs his hands through his hair. "Looks like I gotta go brush up on my princess skills."

Now he's gonna send me on a freaking guilt trip about it. I close my eyes. I mean, I would like to go to Disney. The kid in me would LOVE to go to Disney. And I understand what he means. I understand that he wants a female figure there while she meets all the princesses and a female figure there to take her to the ladies' room and change her into certain clothes and things like that. I understand what he means. I sigh. "Alexxxxxxx..." I throw my head back and mumble his name. He's driving me insane. Being his friend really is ruining my life. I look at him through the corner of my eye. He's looking at me like I'm a mental case but I can see some desperation in his eyes and that sends me over the top. I bring my head back down to regular level and look at him. I ignore the goofy little grin he's giving me and reach my hand out. He has a piece of grass or a piece of leaf in his hair that the wind is blowing around. He flinches away from me for a second which makes me pull my hand back but he leans towards me when he realizes that I'm just going for his hair. I pluck the piece of whatever from his soft waves and rest my fingers there for a little bit. His hair is so soft. Our eyes meet for a second and I feel something weird happen so I look away and snatch my hand out of his hair. "...Fine...I'll go." My voice is a little unsteady so I clear my throat.

"Thanks, Jo." His voice is weird too so I think he might've felt the same thing I felt. I don't know what it was though. It was like...an electric current flowing through my body. It didn't hurt though. It was pleasant...weird, but pleasant. He looks away from me and it's as if the two of us have just been caught doing something we weren't supposed to be doing. Like we're children that just got reprimanded and now we're avoiding eye contact from our disciplinarian. "Um...we should probably head to the ferris wheel now...don't wanna be late getting Lyla." He gets up off the railing we were sitting on and stands up straight, swatting his butt free of nonexistent dirt. I quickly follow his lead and stand up too. I wipe dirt off my butt too. The clock hanging on the building behind the performance stage says that it's only 6:30. We're not supposed to meet his dad to get Lyla for another hour but I think he just wants a reason to get up after that weird feeling we shared. "So you're gonna request off work and stuff?"

"Mhm." I nod.


	20. Sparks

We walk towards the end of the boardwalk in nothing but silence. My hands are in the pockets of my trunks and my shoulders are slouched. Jo's body language is similar to mine in a sense that she's not speaking to me and she seems like she's lost in her thoughts as well. I can't tell what she's thinking about since I'm not looking at her face but if I had to guess, I'd say she's thinking about what just happened when we were sitting down and looking out into the ocean. I could be wrong though. I could be totally off base and I could be mistaking what happened for something that actually didn't happen. But I really don't think I am wrong. _Something_ happened a few moments ago. Something made me want to get up and stop looking at her and something made her think to follow me. I don't know what that something was, but it was definitely something. It was something like a current; like a wave of electricity that's been lying dormant in my body for quite sometime just sparked up as soon as she touched me and when she looked at me and our eyes met, the current shocked the both of us back into reality. I keep trying to tell myself that what happened was nothing. I keep trying to convince the little voice in my head that what I felt when I looked in her eyes was innocent and friendly. And the little voice in my head keeps telling me that I'm full of shit because if it was innocent, then why did it feel like I needed to get up before I got caught doing something wrong? If it was innocent and friendly, then why can't I look at her? Why am I scared that if I look at her, it'll happen again?

Anyway, I'm supposed to be back at the ferris wheel to meet my dad and Lyla by 7:30. It's barely even 6:30 yet and we're already making our way back to the ferris wheel. I don't know what we're going to do, sitting on the bench in front of the ferris wheel for an hour but I'd rather sit on that bench than back on the railings where we were sitting. "...You wanna get on something?" I still refuse to look at her but I muster up the strength from somewhere in my body to ask her. The more I think about it, the more I realize that if we sit on the bench for an entire hour, we're going to be forced to talk. I don't want to talk to Jo. I'd rather get on a ride with her to pass the time than to sit and talk to her and risk what happened a few moments ago happening again. Besides, I love rollercoasters and I haven't gotten on one at all today. I saw from the corner of my eye that she nodded so I pick the nearest rollercoaster and get in line for it. She stands behind me and rests her elbows on the metal bars that enclose the line. What if I am just making up some weird thing in my head? What if what I think happened didn't happen at all? What if I just felt something and she didn't feel the same thing? I mean, I think she did. I'm pretty sure she felt whatever it was too. But on the off chance that she didn't feel it, what if I'm sitting here ignoring her over something that didn't really happen? I shouldn't make it obvious. "Are you okay with rollercoasters? Some people don't do too well with them...I love them, but..."

"I like them." She sticks her butt out as she's leaning against the metal railing and drums her long, neatly trimmed and polished fingernails along the metal. All she says is three words to me before she's silent again, which directly tells me that I wasn't wrong. Whatever it was, she felt it too and it's making things silent and awkward between the two of us. Behind where the two of us are standing, the line is beginning to grow and more people are joining. Standing directly behind us is a couple; a boy and a girl that are dressed alike. The girl is wearing a tight black sundress and her back is facing me and Jo as she's hugging the boy she's with. The guy is wearing a black t-shirt and blue jean shorts, complete with a black baseball hat that's sticking to his long, skater-boyish blonde hair. His girl's back is facing us but he's facing forward and even though he has a girl that's clearly hanging all over him, his eyes are completely locked on Jo's ass. I don't think Jo's sticking her ass out to be flirtatious or sleazy, I just think she's doing it naturally, as a resting position. Her elbows are against the metal railing and her butt is just sticking out a little and well, it's not like she has a small butt. The guy even tilts his head a little bit, obviously trying to see up Jo's shorts.

"Hey Jo..." I call her name to get her attention and she just turns her head to look at me. I was hoping she'd stand up straight but she didn't so now I have to think of another way to get this creep to stop looking at her ass. "You should get in front of me. The smaller person is always supposed to get in the cart first so the bigger person doesn't squish the smaller one on sharp turns and stuff. You should get in front of me." I step aside to let her in front of me. She blows a huff of air out of her mouth which makes a piece of her hair fly upwards. She stands upright and gets in front of me like I told her to. The guy that spent the last couple minutes staring at her butt is now kissing his girlfriend on the lips, which makes me laugh. Some man she has. I'm a man too so honestly, I don't fault the guy for looking. Like I said, it's not like Jo's exactly flat back there. She has a decent sized ass and naturally, men are going to look. I don't know why we look, it's just in our genes or something. If we see a nice ass, we have to look at the ass and if we see a nice pair of tits, we have to look at the tits. It's just the way it is. It's programmed in our brains. But he has a lot of balls because I would NEVER have the guts to stare at a woman while I was with Jenna. Come to think of it, I never really did look at other women while I was married. No other women caught my attention. But I admit that when Jenna and I were dating back when we were teenagers, I'd look at an ass or a rack every now and again. But I was young back then, just like that guy that was just staring at Jo's ass is.

"How many?" The ride attendant unlatches the lock that separates the line from the ride's loading dock but stands in front of the entrance.

"Two." Jo holds up two fingers. The attendant steps aside and lets Jo through. I follow behind her and since we're the first people allowed on after the last round of riders just got off, we have first choice of where we want to sit. Jo goes immediately to the first cart and looks at me to see if it's alright. I nod my head in confirmation as I put the beach bag I've been carrying around into one of the baskets for safekeeping until we get off the ride. Jo climbs into the first cart and once the bag is situated, I join her. "I'm more of a front cart rider...hope that's okay with you." She's busy strapping herself in. I climb down into the cart with her and begin strapping myself in.

"I like the front cart too. I like to see my death before it actually happens." I pull my seatbelt tight and grab onto the bar in front of us that we're supposed to hold onto. I start pulling it towards us so it's snug against our laps. To break the awkwardness that was hovering over us since we got up off the boardwalk rails we were sitting on, she actually laughs. Admittedly, I'm nowhere near as funny as Jo is but it's nice that I could make her laugh at something. Once everyone is sitting down and strapped in, the attendant comes around and checks everyone's seatbelts to make sure they're strapped properly. "About the whole Disney World thing..." I know I probably shouldn't mention it again but if I don't hurry up and say what's on my mind, I'll end up forgetting to mention it altogether and there are some things she needs to know about. She seems okay with the fact that I mentioned it though. "We're staying for a week and I'm gonna buy tickets that include entries to all the parks, so you might want to bring swimsuits in addition to your regular clothes." She nods and keeps listening to me attentively. "And Lyla doesn't know we're going so don't say anything to her about it."

"How'd you plan on telling her?" The rollercoaster starts moving so she holds onto the bars in front of us but her head is still turned my way and she's still talking to me. "Did you have a special way planned or are you just gonna tell her about it eventually?"

"I was just gonna tell her that I had to go somewhere for work and she had to come with me. That's why I was hoping you would come. She'd believe it more if I told her that you were coming along to watch her while I do my work." The rollercoaster starts jacking up a hill, which makes Jo look forward instead of at me. The rollercoaster is pretty basic. It's one big circle. It goes up a hill, back down the hill and it's done. It's not much but nothing much can be expected from a crummy boardwalk rollercoaster that was just erected earlier this morning. I think the games and the rides and the booths are all components of those carnivals that travel from city to city. The coaster reaches the top of the hill and comes to a very brief stop, so I catch a glimpse at Jo just before we're sent plummeting to the bottom of the hill down below. Her eyes are closed and she has the widest smile on her face as the wind's blowing through her hair. The roar of the rollercoaster's engine is pretty loud and the sound of the wheels trudging along the tracks is deafening but if I listen closely enough, I can hear Jo laughing.

Her laugh makes me laugh too for some reason.

 **X X X**

"Jo, I'm over here." I wave my hand very slowly at her. There's no sense in me standing up, jumping up and down or screaming her name because I know she can see me. She's looking right at me but standing in front of a booth with a red and white striped tent and she's talking to the person that's selling whatever it is that she's getting. "Over here." I mouth to her, still motioning for her to come join me. When we got off the rollercoaster, I checked the time and it was 7:15. We started to go get on the other rollercoaster they have, further down the boardwalk but we both decided that we should play it safe and wait out the fifteen minutes instead of chancing it by getting on the coaster and ending up being late to get Lyla. So since we decided against getting on another ride, we found the bench that's right next to the ferris wheel and sat down. Well, at least I sat down. Jo made her way across the boardwalk and she's talking to a food vendor. She looks at me, puts her index finger up to tell me to hold on a minute and digs in her back pocket, probably for money. I watch as she hands the vendor two single dollar bills in exchange for a large plastic bag filled with pink, yellow and blue cotton candy. With her bag of cotton candy in tow, she makes her way back across the boardwalk to the bench I'm sitting on. "...Sweet tooth?"

"What's a carnival without cotton candy?" She sits down next to me on the bench and starts untying the red, white and blue ribbon used to close the bag of cotton candy. She pinches a small bit of the pink candy and sticks it in her mouth with delicacy. "Want some?" Her mouth moves from side to side as she's eating the candy she just put in her mouth and she turns the bag towards me. I stick my hand in the bag and grab a clump of it so I won't have to stick my hands back in the bag for a while. She's pinching and shoving more and more candy into her mouth like it's real food. "I love this stuff. You should've seen me when I first discovered it." She smacks her lips together softly and holds a piece of yellow candy by her mouth. "I told you my mom is kind of a health nut, right?" I nod and she sticks the piece in her mouth. "I didn't have my first bag of cotton candy until I was ten. When we went to Six Flags for my birthday. This man was walking around, pushing a cotton candy cart and I had to beg my mom to let me have some. I thought I died and went to heaven when I tasted it." She giggles. "It was the kind that the guy had to put the pink powder in the machine to flavor it and my mom told him not too much flavoring. So when he gave it to me, it looked like a big cottonball. It wasn't very pink. So I was expecting it to taste like a cotton swab or a piece of toilet paper. But I tasted it and I went crazy." She has a slight smile. "What's your favorite sweet thing to eat?"

I shrug my shoulders and stick another piece of cotton candy in my own mouth. "...I guess I like banana cream pie a whole lot. I like anything banana flavored though. Banana taffy, banana popsicles, banana bread, banana muffins. Banana's the best flavor." I put another piece on my tongue and let it melt. "I hate grape flavored things though. Grape always tastes like medicine."

"Lemon flavored things are usually the best. I hate banana flavored everything. I'll throw up if you stick banana flavored things in front of me. But I do like actual bananas, banana bread and banana muffins. I just don't like artificially flavored banana stuff. It's gross to me." She licks her lips. "I don't really like blue raspberry flavored things either. I don't like how the color stains your lips."

I shrug and nod at the same time. I see what she means with the blue stuff. I hate when Lyla eats blue raspberry flavored things too. The color stains her lips, her tongue and her little teeth and I think she looks like a little dirtball when she walks around with blue lips. "So you didn't have your first taste of cotton candy until you were ten? What, did you grow up a sheltered child? Did your mom ever let you have any fun? Or was she one of those people that fed you raw meat to ensure you get your vitamins and made you drink spinach and carrot smoothies?"

She laughs at my joke. "She wasn't like that. I was allowed to eat lollipops and ice cream and cookies and cake and stuff. It's not like she told me that I couldn't eat sweets. I was allowed to eat as much junk food as I wanted, she didn't totally deprive me as a child. She just didn't believe in feeding me fast food. She had to cook dinner herself, no matter what. I had takeout for the first time when I was nine and that's only because my mom had to go to a teaching conference and my Aunt Shelby had to watch me. And believe me, Aunt Shelby had to call my mom and make sure it was okay for me to have the Chinese food she ordered for dinner. I got really sick from eating the Chinese though, I remember that. I got really, really sick from it. My mom got home from her conference and she had to hold me and keep buckets next to me for me to throw up. I was very sick." She sticks her hand in the cotton candy bag again. "My mom just bought all organic things. She made sure everything had no pesticides, the eggs were cage free, the milt hadn't been pasteurized, the meat wasn't processed. She would buy meat from a farmer himself and when she got it, she would have to pluck the feathers off the chicken, wash the blood off the steaks, skin the scales off the fish and stuff...and she would rather me have natural sugars than artificial sweeteners but it's not like she didn't buy me Oreos and potato chips and Tootsie Pops."

"So if you grew up on all natural stuff, how come you're okay to eat hamburgers and hot dogs that you don't make yourself now? I mean, you got sick from the Chinese because it wasn't organic, right? So how come you didn't have to puke after you ate the hamburger earlier? And you don't get all weird when you drink soda."

"The summer before I went to college, my mom gave me a choice. She told me that I could stick with the diet she raised me on. She told me I could continue to eat organic food and stuff or she told me that I could discontinue it. She gave me the choice. And me? Well... I really liked McDonald's and I didn't mind eating a hamburger I didn't make myself and plus, I didn't think my college was gonna offer all organic everything. So I told her I didn't want to keep eating organic food and she helped me wean myself off of it. It took like...five months for me to finally be okay with eating regular food. Every time I would eat regular food, I would end up throwing it up or having to use the bathroom but after like five, maybe six months, everything was okay." She bites her lip. "I love my mom to death, but that's no way to raise your kid."

"Your mom sounds awesome. I wish I cared enough to feed Lyla everything organic but I just don't have the time and I wouldn't know where to start." I dust off the last piece from my clump of cotton candy. "Is your mom like a...Jehovah's Witness or something?" She wrinkles her brow at me. "Look, I don't know much about religion but I know there's that one religion where it's against the rules to eat certain foods. So is it like...against your mom's religion to eat certain things too? Or was she just the definition of a health nut?"

"We're not religious." She shakes her head. "I've never set foot in a church, except for my grandma Ruth's funeral and that was when I was three. Don't take this personal, but...I hate religion and I hate religious people. Religion causes too many fights and most religious people are just judgmental assholes that get away with being such assholes because it's their religion. I hate religion." She talks about it like it's scum at the bottom of her shoe. She's talking about religion like it's a person.

"So you're an atheist?" I turn and look at her.

"No." She shakes her head. "I'm nothing. I'm no religion. I don't believe in God but I don't...not believe in God either. I know it doesn't make sense. But I'm not a...sadistic devil-worshipper. I believe in ghosts, I believe in a higher power, I believe that sometimes people come back when they die. But I don't believe in God and heaven or hell. I'm just...nothing. Get it? I don't identify with any particular religion. Wouldn't mind going to church but not feeling like I'm missing out by not being there. I'm just no kind of religion." She smirks but I can tell she's only doing that to let me know that she really feels strongly about this. She said it doesn't make sense but it does. I understand perfectly what she's trying to say. "My uh...husband. He grew up Catholic. Went to church every Sunday, had a confirmation and a communion whatever and went to CCD as a child. Can you imagine that topic of discussion at the dinner table?" I can't help but laugh. Not hard, not loud, but I laugh anyway. I like how she makes a joke out of things that aren't necessarily funny. "So what about you?" She turns towards me. "What are you?"

"Grew up Christian but I don't really go to church either. My wife was a Christian too but we never really went to church. Jenna always said that she didn't need to sit in a fancy building to praise the lord and so we never did. We went sometimes though. Like on Christmas Eve and on Easter Sunday, we'd go." I rub my fingers along the stubble on my chin that I should really consider shaving. "But um..." I clear my throat. "Towards the end, we went every Sunday. It made Jenna feel better to be there...said it made her feel closer to the lord." I sigh. I hate thinking about that though. Everyone used to come up to us and tell us that they were praying for us. They used to donate money and stuff towards finding a cure. They used to hold dinners and stuff in order to raise money to donate towards finding a cure. I know going to church towards the end made Jenna feel better but in truth, it made me feel awfully lousy. Just seeing everyone tell us that they were praying for us made it all the more real that I was going to lose my wife and that sucked. I sniff hard, just to ensure that the tears stay in my eyes. Jo reaches across the bench and puts her hand on my thigh for a brief moment before she takes it away. "...Sometimes I think it would've been easier if she had gone suddenly. I wish I didn't have to sit there and watch her waste away."

"Yeah?" She rests her back against the bench and clears her throat. "I guess it could be easier that way. I guess it would be easier to not see it coming." She sighs. "But then again...if you know...you could prepare yourself for it."

"Nothing prepared me for that. No matter how much talking my wife and I did, nothing prepared me for losing her." I counter her. Until this moment, I always focused on how similar me and Jo's two situations are. I never thought about how different we tend to be. She lost her husband suddenly, I lost my wife over time. I got the chance to keep a piece of my wife with me, Jo never got the chance to have a piece of her husband with her. I was able to hear what Jenna wanted for the rest of my life, Jo's left guessing what her husband would want her to do. "...I think the worst part is watching Lyla forget her." She tilts her head just slightly and I nod. For a while, I tried to ignore it. I wrote it off as part of her grieving process but I know for a fact that she's forgetting her. "She's three. I know years from now, she really won't remember Jenna. I know she won't remember the tea parties they used to have, how Jenna was trying to potty train her, how Jenna used to dress her up like a baby doll. I know she won't remember. How much do you remember from when you were three?" I exhale. "But watching her forget...it sucks. During the first few weeks after, she would ask about her mom every day, multiple times a day. Then it became less and less...sometimes she talks about her but it's nowhere near as much as it used to be."

She combs her fingers through her hair and shakes it. "Um...I think maybe..." She starts but her voice trails off. I suck up the million different emotions I'm currently feeling and look at Jo. "I'm not...trying to overstep here, okay? I'm really not. I'm just..." She bites her lip. "I think maybe you should have a talk with Lyla...about death...I think she's confused about it..."

I know she said she's not trying to overstep but it's taking everything in me not to flip out on Jo right now. As if I haven't already spoken to Lyla about death?! She's crossing SO many lines. This isn't her place to comment on my daughter's relationship with death. She's only known my daughter for three weeks. It hasn't even been a full month just yet. It'll be a full month next week, but still. She doesn't know my daughter and she damn for sure doesn't need to tell me how to parent. "Lyla? Confused about death?" My tone is calm but I can feel that it's very close to changing. Jo nods her head very slightly. "...She lost her MOTHER when she was three years old, Jo! So she has an unhealthy relationship with death, she's THREE. But she lost her freaking mother so I'd say she knows a thing or two about it!"

"Alex, I wasn't..." She looks at me with very, very sorrowful eyes. Her lips are parted just slightly and the bottoms of her top teeth are showing. She stars shaking her head very slowly. "I swear..." She's all clammed up and stuttering but she's still looking directly at me with the word "sorry" written all over her face. "I would never...insult you or your parenting or anything like that. I think you're an amazing father, I swear on my life I do. I was just...I-I didn't mean to overstep any boundaries. I know I'm not really...qualified to make any assumptions or say anything about her so please believe that was never my intention to offend you. I was just...When I was bathing her...she made the comment to me that she...she thinks you and her mother are getting back together. She thinks that you're going to go to heaven and so is she and she thinks her mother is coming back. That's all I was saying. I'm sorry. I did not mean to..."

"She said that?" I interrupt her mid-sentence. "She actually said that to you?" She closes her mouth and nods her head softly. I didn't know Lyla felt that way. She doesn't talk to me much about Jenna and how she feels. Most of the time, I'm left guessing and because she never mentions Jenna to me or tells me that she misses her mother, I just assume that she's okay with everything. I didn't know she felt that way. She really thinks that Jenna's coming back? I sit back against the bench too and look dead ahead. "...I'm sorry." I mutter under my breath and take a deep breath. I basically snapped on Jo for no reason but more so than that, she was right. I need to talk to Lyla about that. Maybe she is a little confused about death and how death works. "I'll talk to her about it. I...I didn't know she thought about it like that." Jo stays quiet. "I guess I just don't know how to explain it to her in a way that won't hurt...I don't wanna hurt her. She's been through enough..."

She clears her throat and speaks up again. "...No matter what, it's gonna hurt." She creeps her hand over again and rests it on my thigh, but she doesn't move it away this time. "There is no easy way to tell a baby that their parent isn't gonna come back. There's no way to make it hurt less. There's no way to let her down easy. It's a tough thing to say to your baby."

"How would you tell her?" I ask. I don't know why, but Jo seems like she'd know what to say. She doesn't have any kids and she's not a mother herself but somehow, she seems qualified to give me advice on what to say. "What would you say to your daughter?"

"I..." She starts but doesn't finish. Her shoulders slouch and she sucks on her bottom lip for a moment. "I would tell her how much her mommy loved her. And I would tell her that whenever she wants to talk to her mommy, all she has to go is go in her room, shut the door and talk until she can't talk anymore...because her mommy's in the sky and her mommy is always listening and her mommy can always see her and look after her. And I would tell her sorry...I would tell her that I'm so sorry that something so horrible had to happen to her...but I would tell her that mommy is never coming back. And I would make it more clear to her that one day...as long as she's a good girl until she's very, very old...that she'll see her mommy again in a very long time as long as she's good." She looks down at the ground. "...That's how I would tell her."

I nod my head and stare out into the ocean as the sun continues to slowly set off in the horizon. "Remind me to thank you one day, Jo." I think I'm gonna use that. The whole, "go in your room and talk to your mommy" thing. I'm certainly going to have a talk with Lyla about what happened to her mommy and what it means to die but I'm going to use Jo's speech and Jo's advice. She gives good advice. I owe her a big, big thank you. I hope me and Jo can stay friends for a long time. I hope she remains in Lyla's life because for her to not have any children of her own, she's really good with parenting and I have a feeling that in the angsty teenage years, I'm gonna need more of her advice. I sigh for the millionth time and lift up so I can get my phone out of my pocket. I haven't been keeping track of time but I really think my dad is late with getting her here.

Just before I get my phone out of my pocket, I hear loud, continuous clapping of feet approaching me. "Daddy! Daddy!" I nix the phone and look up and sure enough, she's running towards me with my father and nurse Michelle following close behind. Her little ponytail is flowing in the wind and she's got the biggest smile on her face. She's holding something in one of her hands but she's too far away for me to be able to tell what it is. "Daddy!" I get up off the bench and kneel down with my arms out. She seems like she really missed me so I assume she'll want a hug. She runs all the way to me and she doesn't jump in my arms like I thought she would. Instead, she stops about half a foot away from me and holds up what she has in her hand. "Looky, daddy! Looky!" She's holding a plastic baggie with a purple goldfish with long, black fins swimming around in it. The thing is creepy. "Looky!" She's so excited about it though. Her smile is big and priceless and she's staring at the creepy thing with adoration in her eyes.

"Oh wow!" I pick up the bag and look at it. "You got a fishy?"

She nods her head. "Uh huh! I...Pappy lemme pay in the fishy bowl game...and I winned her! I winned her daddy!" She's so proud of herself. It's like the biggest accomplishment of her life, that she won a little fish from a carnival game. Hey, I'm pretty proud of her myself. "I...I put a fishin' pole...in the water and I pick up...I pick up a wubber ducky and my wubber ducky haded...um...a red dot on the butt so I winned." She's tapping on my leg. "I keep her, dada? I keep her, wight?"

"Yeah, we'll keep her. We'll get her a nice home and she can live in our dining room. We'll get her a bowl with some pretty rocks and we'll put a house in her bowl and you can feed her." My dad stands behind Lyla, his hand locked in Michelle's hand and a grin on his face. I just glare at him. I can see he's extremely proud for letting her play a game that she won but I couldn't be madder at him. "She's a pretty fish, baby girl." I kiss Lyla on her forehead and hand her the bag back. "Go show Jojo your fishy, okay? Go show her." Lyla nods and excitedly struts over to where Jo's sitting to show off her new pet. I stand upright and stomp over to my dad. "Really, Pop? A fish? Really?!" He squints at me. "You couldn't have let her play a game in which the prizes WEREN'T alive? She would've been fine with a stuffed chicken or a freaking dragon. But you got her a FISH, dad. A FISH." I shake my head. "As if she hasn't had enough death around her, you're gonna get her a damn animal that'll be dead in a week?"

"Oh, Alex." He waves his hand at me and shakes his head. "If you feed it right, clean it's damn tank and take care of it, fish can live for 20 years. You have to starve the fish to death or let it swim in it's own feces for days before a fish will die. Take care of the damn thing and you won't have to worry about it dying on her." I just shake my head. Looks like I have no choice but to make sure the damn fish is treated like royalty because I'll be damned if I let Lyla start to love the thing and have it die on her just like her mother did. That damn fish is gonna be treated like a member of the family. "Anyway, she had fun with me and Missy." _Missy?_ They're on a nickname basis now? Wow. "She had some Italian ice from the vendor that was selling Rita's and I bought her a lollipop, one of those swirly ones. She ate it all." Michelle puts her head against my dad's arm and wraps her arm around his waist. This is weirding me out to see my dad all buddy buddy with someone I work with. "Oh yeah, do you work tomorrow Al?" I nod very slowly. "Well you might wanna see if Jo can keep her. Missy and I...we're gonna go catch a movie." They smile at each other like lovestruck idiots. "And are you still looking for someone to go to D-I-S-N-E-Y with?"

"...Jo said she'll come." I mumble, expressing my discontent with the fact that he's basically leaving me without a babysitter tomorrow. I already know that Jo doesn't work though. She's off tomorrow but that' snot the point. What if she did work tomorrow? Then what am I supposed to do with Lyla? All because he wants to go catch a movie with his little girlfriend.

"Oh...well do you still have room for two? We'll pay our own way...our own separate hotel rooms and everything." I roll my eyes. Well I'm not just gonna tell Jo nevermind. I'm not gonna revoke my offer all because my dad wants to turn my daughter's birthday celebration into some kind of date for him and his new flame. "You can still take your friend. Miss and I were thinking about meeting you guys there. Just let me know wahat hotel you're staying in so we can book our own room. We don't want to stay the entire week. We might just fly down for like..four days. Probably spend most of that time on the beach. We won't be a bother. We do want to spend Lyla's birthday with her though, so I hope that's not a problem." He continues.

"And who knows?" Nurse Michelle starts talking again. She's lucky I work with her, otherwise I'd tell her to shove a sock in it. "Maybe your father and I can take Lyla off your hands for a couple hours while you're there. That way you and your girlfriend can have some alone time together at the park...you can ride all the big kid rides." She smiles at me.

"Jo's not my girlfriend." That's all I say before I walk away. I turn around and walk toward Jo and Lyla. Lyla is sitting on Jo's lap, chowing down on cotton candy and resting very comfortably against Jo's body. Jo's arms are wrapped around Lyla's body and she's very gently, swaying from side to side while she holds her. Before I walk over to them and break up their tender little moment, I just watch them for a second. Lyla's head is on Jo's chest and her hand is deep in the bag of cotton candy. Her fish is on the bench next to Jo and Jo is holding her as naturally as can be, swaying back and forth and lightly mouthing something continuous. I think she might be singing to Lyla, to the music that's still playing over the boardwalk speakers. A smile creeps across my face, but it's a very light smile. I sit down next to the two of them on the bench anyway and surprisingly, Jo looks at me but doesn't stop singing. It's not long before she takes her attention off of me though.

"You make me smile like the sun, fall out of bed, sing like a bird, dizzy in my head, spin like a record...crazy on a Sunday night..." Her hand is tracing very small circles in the middle of Lyla's back. Now, she's not a perfect singer...she's not American Idol worthy and she certainly can't win a Grammy award. But her singing voice is just a little bit pretty. And I know Lyla. I know that she probably heard Jo singing and she wouldn't let her stop once she heard it. "You make me dance like a fool, forget how to breathe, shine like gold, buzz like a bee...just the thought of you can drive me wild." I think my daughter might be sleepy, that's why she's making Jo rock her and sing to her. I just don't think Jo had this idea herself. "Oh, you make me smile." She stops singing and rests her chin on top of Lyla's head. "...I think someone's S-L-E-E-P-Y."

"Probably...she was up early." I scoot closer, mindful not to crush the goddamned fish and hold my arms out. "You want me to take her?" Jo shakes her head and continues rocking Lyla. I just rest back against the bench and look up in the sky. It's almost completely dark and almost time for the firework show to start. I don't think Lyla's going to sleep through the firework show because she's been way too excited for it all day but I think it might be pushing time for her to go to bed. I don't think we're going to stay for the entire show. I don't want her to fight her sleep for too long. I put my arms on the back of the bench and it's kind of like I have my arm around Jo and Lyla but I swear it's not my intention. A small group of people walk past me but they stop at Jo and I don't know why but it's not my business. I guess she knows them.

"Yeah. Alex, this is...Macy, Kaylee, Lucille and Luke. And their boyfriends, husbands...mates." Jo half-ass introduces me to the group of people that stopped to talk to her. I recognize all of them from the restaurant she works at. I give them all a friendly kind of smile and wave. She secures Lyla in her arms and stands up. "I would've came with you guys for a little." Jo and her little group of friends start talking and somewhere in my body, I feel a little guilty. She has other friends that she could've hung out with today and she didn't. I wonder if she wanted to. "No, no...it's fine." Jo laughs. "Yeah, totally. Alright. Yep. She's a little tired right now so..." She looks down at Lyla and kisses her forehead. "Mhm." She nods. "Alright...I'll catch up with you guys." She lets her friends go off in the direction they were walking and she sits back down on the bench with Lyla.

"...If you want to go with them, you can. I won't be offended. How come you didn't tell me your friends were here? I would've let you go off with them. I'm not offended that you have other friends, Jo." I turn towards her.

"I don't want to go with them though." She shakes her head. "I would've been third-wheeling. They're all with their boyfriends and stuff and I would've been the only one without a boyfriend and it would've been awkward. I really don't want to go with them." She looks towards me too. "They just wanted me to introduce them to you. They can't believe I'm here with you."

"Oh, is that what it is?" I chuckle. A loud shriek sounds in the air, drawing everyone's attention to the sky. After a loud popping noise, a purple firework streaks across the sky and sizzles. Lyla picks her head up off Jo's chest and looks towards the sky. Another firework streaks across the sky and this time, when it explodes, it's silver and blue and very pretty. When it flares out, the lines it makes sprinkles down and seemingly disappears into the ocean. "That one was pretty, wasn't it Ly?" Lyla nods her head and points at the sky. She babbles something to Jo. Jo nods in agreement and watches as more fireworks explode and light up the night sky in various, beautiful colors.

All the people that are here as a couple are holding hands, kissing, hugging and watching the fireworks together. Next to where we're sitting, my dad and Michelle are standing. My dad is standing behind her and his arms are wrapped around her. Her head is tilted back and they're kissing. I don't know if I'm creeped out or happy for my old man. I guess I'm a little bit of both. I look over at Jo and catch her scanning around the boardwalk and noticing the couples the same way I noticed them. Her eyes stop at my dad and Michelle and she cracks a very soft smile that not only comes across her face but shows in her eyes as well. Her eyes are smiling right along with her mouth. I turn my attention back to the sky though. I move my arm from the bench where it was resting and lie it flat on the seat of the bench, with my palm overturned. I wonder if she'll catch my drift. I look out the corner of my eye. She looked down at my hand and saw it but I don't know if she knows what I'm saying. I do see her move from the corner of my eye though, so I just look strictly at the sky and at the sky only.

After a few moments, I feel something rest in the palm of my hand. I don't have to look to know that it's hers though. I feel her long, polished fingernails brush against my palm as they're searching to find the empty spaces between my fingers. She rests the palm of her hand flat against mine and snuggles her fingers between mine. I glance down from the corner of my eye again and see that we're almost holding hands. Our fingers aren't interlocked so it's not a complete hold but it's almost a hold. I feel her thumb brush against the padding of my thumb for about a second or two and then suddenly, her hand is gone. It's not in mine anymore and my hand is bare again. I feel her looking at me. I feel her eyes on me. So I turn my head slightly but when I do, I find that hers is facing forward.

Both her hands are on Lyla's legs again and it's as if we were never holding hands in the first place.


	21. Mail

"We almost there?" She turns her head and looks out the window for the billionth time since we've gotten on the bus. Aside from her constantly asking me if we're almost there, she's actually been really well-behaved for me on the bus ride. I was a little bit nervous to bring her with me but I really needed to run to the store and I had no other choice but to bring her with me. And since I don't have a car, the bus was the only option I had. I obviously don't mind watching her but I do wish Alex would've given me more than a 24-hour notice before springing it on me. It's not really his fault though. His dad told him at the festival last night that he couldn't watch Lyla today because he and his girlfriend had plans but it still would've been nice to have more than such a short notice. I _did_ tell him that I'd watch her whenever he needed me to though. I'm also not complaining too much because he only needs me to watch her until 3:00. He works from 7-3 today which isn't bad for me. I went to his house at 6:15 this morning and she was still sleeping. She didn't wake up until 10:00 which means that I had the chance to take a nap from 6:15 to 10:00 but I only slept until 9:30. When she woke up, I fixed her a bowl of cereal for breakfast and we watched some TV before I realized that today is Thursday and there's only two buses that go into town today. The 12:00 bus and the 4:00 bus. I had to catch the 12:00 bus because the 4:00 bus would've been too late for me to do what I have to do so I text Alex and told him that I had to run into town to do some errands and I had to take Lyla with me. He didn't mind.

Truth be told, I haven't been in a good mood since yesterday. I'm trying to chalk that up to the fact that I got a surprise visitor this morning but I don't think that has anything to do with it. I've never PMSed a day in my life and my visitor never makes me cranky. I'm usually the same, pleasant person, visitor or no visitor. I think the real source of my bad mood is the fact that I'm just...I'm confused. I'm not in a bad mood per say, I'm just not in as good a mood as I've been in before. To be totally honest, I didn't want to babysit Lyla today. Not because I don't want to spend time with Lyla but because I don't really want to associate with her father. Things between Alex and I haven't been very...good since last night. Things haven't been bad either, they've just been awkward. There's something about him...something between us...and I don't know how I feel about it. I don't feel good about it, that's for sure. And what's more bothersome is the fact that we won't talk about it. Both of us are too stubborn to be the first ones to break the ice about it so we just haven't said anything. Haven't said anything about the weird eye contact, haven't said anything about the fact that we might've held hands last night. I feel weird and I think it would be best if I stayed away from him for a while but I can't do that if I have to babysit his daughter for him.

Ever since it happened last night, I've been replaying it over and over in my head. I didn't sleep last night because I was just thinking about it. I was thinking about how I watched him move his arm down off the back of the bench and rest it in the empty space between our bodies. He left his hand palm-side up and his fingers were bent upwards, an open opportunity for me to slip my hand inside his. It kind of felt like he was asking me if I would. It felt like he was asking me if I would hold his hand, amongst all the couples that were sharing kisses underneath the fireworks. I don't know for sure if that's what he was implying but it sure felt that way. I put my hand in his and when I touched him...when my fingertips just barely grazed the palm of his hand...I felt so alive, if that makes sense. It felt like that's exactly where my hand should've been. Like there was a magnet in my fingertips and one in his palm and when they came together, that's exactly what should've happened. I put my fingers between his and almost locked them inside. His hand was so soft. I brushed my thumb along the soft, clammy padding of his thumb and I just had to let go after that. I had to. It felt right to hold his hand but it felt wrong. It felt so wrong. I tossed and turned all night trying to figure out why it felt so right. I know why it felt wrong. I know damn well why it felt wrong. But I couldn't figure out why it felt right. And I couldn't figure out why I took my hand away when I know damn well I wanted to keep it there. I wanted to lock our fingers together and maybe put my head on his shoulder and maybe caress his arm with my fingers. I didn't want to kiss him...no. I didn't want to do that. But I wanted to touch him.

"Yeah, we're almost there." I wrap my arms around her body and fold my hands on her stomach. The bus clearly doesn't have car seats for toddlers so instead of sticking her in the chair next to me when I know she won't sit still, I just decided to keep her on my lap. Before the bus comes to a stop, I fix her clothes and her hair so I won't have to do it when we get off. I think I got my first real taste of what it's like to be a mother today. I fed her, brushed her teeth, got her dressed, brushed her hair, washed her face and I'm taking her to the store with me. Of course I don't know much about being a parent considering the fact that I'm not one, but I imagine this is how it feels. I admit, I had a little bit of fun getting her dressed. She showed me where all her clothes were at and I took it from there. I put her in a blue jean skirt and a yellow t-shirt with a bumblebee on the front. I knew we were going to be walking so instead of putting her in sandals, I put yellow socks on her and stuck a pair of black Converse sneakers on her feet. Her hair was my favorite part though. I parted it down the middle and tied two pigtails in it, complete with a yellow hair bow on each pigtail. I had to spray some water in her hair to get her pigtails to look neater but it worked and they're perfect, if I do say so myself.

The bus slows to a stop and the doors open. I put her down on the ground and stand up, grabbing her hand and holding it tightly. I start walking but she doesn't join me so I stop. I look down to see if there's something wrong with her and there's not, she just refuses to walk. When I look at her, she holds her arms up so I bend down and pick her up. She's probably used to being carried everywhere by Alex. She probably puts her arms up and he just carries her without hesitation, but I'm not going to carry her around all day today. She's not heavy. She's actually pretty petite for a soon-to-be four year old but that's not the point. The point is she's about to be four and there's no need for her to be carried around like a baby. I go ahead and carry her off the bus but once we get onto the concrete sidewalk, I bend down and take my arms from around her body to put her down. "No Doedoe...no no." She holds onto me like the ground is shark infested water that I'm about to deposit her inside of. I think the problem is the fact that there is a crowd of people surrounding us that just got off the bus with us. "I wanna hold you, Doedoe...I wanna hold you..."

"I'm not carrying you, baby." I put her down anyway and when I do, she looks around at all the people around us and starts whining. She wraps her arms around my blue jeans-covered leg and holds on for dear life. "Lyla...you have to be a big girl." I shake her off of my leg and despite the fact that there _are_ people around, I kneel down on the pavement anyway and look at her eye-to-eye. I put my hands on her arms and force her to look at me. "Look at me, baby...look at me." She's too concerned with the fact that there are so many other people around. "Lyla, look at me and not them. Look at Jojo." Her eyes meet mine and she genuinely looks scared. "I'm not carrying you." I shake my head and hearing me say that makes her whine again. "You don't need me to carry you. You're a big girl. You just need to hold my hand, that's all. You don't need me to carry you around everywhere. You can walk. Just hold my hand. I won't let anything happen to you. You trust me?" She nods her head and offers her hand to me. "There we go." I stand up straight and hold her hand very tight. I start walking down the street to head for the Walmart building and she's walking with me. She's walking really, really close to me and squeezing my hand extremely tight but she's walking and that's all I can ask for. "Do you want to walk around in the store or ride in the cart?"

"I..." She squeezes my hand even tighter as we walk through the automatic doors. "I get in the car?" She looks up at me. I nod my head and pick her up again. Instead of putting her in the front of the cart though, I stick her in the basket part of it and start pushing it. "Where we need, Doedoe?" She sits in the middle of the basket with her legs crossed and her pink pull-up exposed to the world. Once she actually gets to be in underwear, I'll explain to her about having to keep her legs closed but for now, it's just a pull-up and it's fine if her pull-up is showing through the bottom of her skirt. "We need...um...we need Pahsickles?"

"No, we don't need Popsicles." I push the cart past the bread section and wheel it to the freezer section. "You can get a box of Popsicles though. Go ahead and pick one out." I stop her in front of the Popsicle boxes. She's staring at them like she's picking out a toy and can't decide which ones to get. I came in here specifically for a box of tampons and for a box of tampons only. That's what I really need. That's why I can't wait to catch the 4:00 bus into town. I came on it this morning before I went to go babysit for Alex and I used my last one this morning and I desperately need a new box. That's the whole reason I had to come into town. But while I'm here, I should grab more shampoo and conditioner, another package of soap and maybe some cheap deodorant and toothpaste. I can't really afford to buy her Popsicles but if she doesn't pick out an expensive box, I might be able to swing it. "Do you want...red, white and blue Popsicles?" I point to a box of Bomb Pops. "Red, orange, purple and yellow Popsicles?" I point to a box of generic cherry, orange, grape and banana flavored Popsicles. She nods her head to those ones. "Okay." I pull open the freezer door and grab the box of Popsicles. "Here honey." I hand the box to her and she holds it with a smile on her face.

I wheel the cart out of the freezer section and cut across to get to the hygienic section. I grab the cheapest package of bar soap I can find, a gold bottle of Suave shampoo and the matching conditioner and a tube of powder scented deodorant. Lyla's too busy holding onto her Popsicles and avoiding eye contact with other people to be focused on the things in this aisle, which I'm thankful for because there are a couple packages with pink princesses on them and if she were to ask me to get her something with the princesses on it, I would most likely have a hard time telling her no. I push the cart a little more and grab a cheap box of toothpaste as well. I turn the corner to get to the feminine products. I pick up a box of no-brand tampons and check to see the size. They're supers, I stick them in the cart and I'm done in here. "Doedoe? Why is...um...Why is bitch a bad...word?"

"It just is. It's not a nice thing to say to people. It's really mean." While I push the cart towards the cash registers, I look at her. "You're not supposed to say that at all. It's so mean. You say that to people you really, really, really don't like and even then, it's not nice. You can call people 'meanies', 'stupid'...anything but that. If you say too many bad words, your tongue will start hurting." Her eyes get really big. "Yep, it's true. It happened to me once. I said too many bad words and my tongue hurt for a really long time. So I don't say bad words anymore." She's looking at me like she can't believe what I'm saying. "I bet you hear a lot of bad words from people. But you don't say them, do you? 'Cause you're a good girl."

"My mommy...her used to say lots of mean words... 'specially to daddy sometimes." She licks her lips and looks all around the store. I giggle to myself at that revelation. Yeah, I bet Alex used to make his wife say a lot of bad words. I've had to call him an asshole a few times before. I can only imagine what he was like with his wife. "Daddy and Pappy say mean words too. Pappy bad." I walk past a bunch of very long lines in search for a 20 items or less checkout. "...Doedoe?" The tone of her voice is different this time. It's as inquisitive as it usually is. It's actually quite solemn. So a lot of the time, I usually just let her talk while I pretend to listen but this time, I actually open my ears and pay attention to her. "...Daddy telled me...him said...him said my mama...her not coming back...ebber." She puts the box of Popsicles down and innocently touches the buttons on her skirt. My heart hurts all of a sudden. I didn't expect him to tell her so soon. Poor Lyla. "But him said I talk to her. But her not answer when I talk...why?"

"That's just the way heaven works, baby." I turn and get into a short speedy checkout line. I lean against the handle of the cart and look her in her eyes. "She can't answer you but she can hear you. She hears everything you're saying to her but she can't answer you."

"But her up in the sky so her should answer me." She pokes her lip out. "Maybe her not hear me. Maybe her not listen. Maybe her sleeping." She looks away from me and scratches her little head. "...Her was sleeping last time I sawed her. Daddy said her was gonna sleep for a long time. Her still sleeping?"

"Maybe she's sleeping sweetie. She just might be." Her eyes are breaking my heart. She doesn't look like she's going to cry but I can see the sadness behind her brave face. I think I might've given Alex bad advice by telling him to tell her that she can talk to her mother anytime she wants to. I didn't expect her to actually expect a response. I gave him horrible advice. "You know what your mommy is?" She looks up at me for a response. "Your mommy's an angel. You know what angels do?" She shakes her head. "Angels live up in the sky and they protect people. Angels are magic. They can't talk to people like us...people that aren't magic. Because if they talk to us, their magic will go away. So maybe that's why your mommy didn't answer. She doesn't want her magic to go away. But she can hear you and she hears everything you say and everything you talk to her about. She lives up there in the sky with all the other angels and every time you talk to her, she can hear you."

"...Her live in the sky forever?" I nod at her. "Oh." She looks down again.

I feel really guilty but I think I have an idea. I don't know how good of an idea this is. It might be a bad one for all I know. But I think it might help her out a little. I look behind me and see that there isn't anyone behind me in line, which is a good thing. I feel so guilty. I gave Alex horrible, horrible advice. I grab the cart and back up with it until I'm clear enough to turn around. I turn it around and walk off in search of the party supplies section of the store.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I really wish my dad could've watched Lyla today instead of Jo. Things just haven't been right between us and there are a million other things I'd rather do than go home and have to face her. Last night after we...may or may not have held hands, we just didn't talk. We didn't say anything to each other, anything at all. We actually stayed until the end of the firework show and when it was over, we walked back to the car in silence. We drove home in silence and the only time we talked was when I asked her if she could watch Lyla for me today. She told me yes and we stopped talking again. She got out of my car and that was the end of it. She came to my house at 6:15 this morning. I told her "good morning" and she didn't say anything back to me besides, "hi". She didn't even call me to ask me if she could take Lyla into town with her. She text messaged me instead. I don't know what's wrong with us but we're not speaking right now and that's all I know. I put my days in for Disney today at work though. I told Arizona that I need the 13th - 20th off and she gave it to me already. Even though Jo and I aren't speaking right now, I still hope she's willing to go. I don't even know what that hand-hold meant. I don't know if it meant anything at all, truly. I just don't know what the deal with it was and at this point, I doubt I'll ever know. It wasn't a friendly gesture but I don't feel like it meant anything too serious. Everyone was just kissing under the fireworks and stuff and I just...felt inclined to put my hand down. I wasn't expecting her to hold it. I guess maybe I was hoping she would, but I didn't expect her to. I just put my hand down and left the opportunity open.

Ever since it happened last night, I've been replaying it over and over in my head. I didn't sleep much last night because I was awake just thinking about it. I was thinking about how I left the opportunity open and she took it. She slid her petite, soft hand inside of mine and I felt her fingernails brush along my palm. Her thumb stroked mine and just like that, it was gone. I wanted to close my hand around hers, make it official that we were holding hands before she pulled away. I wanted to hold her hand and maybe stroke it for a little while. I didn't want her to let it go. But she did and when her hand was out of mine, I felt a slight emptiness. I felt like her hand needed to be in mine. I felt like the entire purpose of yesterday was for us to end up holding hands and she pulled hers away. It felt wrong to want to hold her hand. Like after you cheat on a diet or on a test. You feel guilty about doing it but you know deep within that the payout is satisfying in the end. Holding Jo's hand felt more wrong than right. But the rightness about it was enough to make me want to keep holding her hand. I didn't even feel the urge to kiss her. Everyone around us was kissing, holding each other, hugging...I didn't want to kiss her or hug her. All I wanted was to hold her hand.

I force the thoughts of the hand holding from my head and brace myself as I park my car in my driveway. I don't want Jo to know that I've been thinking about this so much. If it were up to me, I would've forgotten about it already. I don't wish it never happened but I do wish it didn't make things strained and awkward between us. I wish Jo wasn't as stubborn as I am and I wish we would just...talk about it maybe. Not gonna happen though. Jo doesn't talk about much. I lock my car up and jog up the flight of steps that leads to my porch. I find that the front door is open. The screen door is shut but the regular door is open. I pull the screen open and kick my shoes off at the door. The kitchen light is on and I hear Lyla actively talking about something. I was expecting the two of them to be upstairs in her room. I pad to the kitchen and stand in the doorway, taking in the scene until they notice me. Jo's sitting at my kitchen table and Lyla's sitting in the middle of the table in front of her. The two of them are in the midst of colorful sheets of paper, envelopes and packages of colorful things that I can't make out. Lyla's pulling off stickers from a sheet of them and Jo's writing something down on a piece of bright blue envelope.

"We make it pitty, Doedoe..." Lyla picks up a bottle of silver glitter-glue and hands it to Jo. Jo takes it off of her and writes something with the glue bottle's nozzle. "I put a sticker on it..." Lyla must've convinced Jo to open up the arts and crafts box in the back of her closet. I never let her open that thing up because EVERYTHING in that box is messy. Jenna used to make messes with her in the arts and crafts box but Jo's smart about it. She laid down newspaper on the table. "Her gonna love it..." I softly clear my throat to get their attention. Lyla turns around to look at me and Jo just looks up from her work on the blue envelope. "Daddy, looky!" She picks up the package of what I couldn't make out and I finally see that she's holding a package of multicolored party balloons. I look at Jo for a moment and our eyes meet for a split second before she looks away. I sigh and walk over towards the table to see what they're doing.

It looks like my wife dressed my daughter today. She has yellow ribbons in her hair, a skirt, a yellow shirt and perfectly matched socks. Everything is color-coordinated and her hair is flawless. Jo dressed her. She did a really nice job. A really nice job with dressing Lyla. "What are you guys doing, munchkin?" I bend down and put my lips to the top of Lyla's head. In the messy pile of glitter, balloons, paper, envelopes and stickers, I could guess what they're doing but I'd probably be wrong. They're making some kind of craft but I don't know what it is. "Besides making a mess..." Jo won't look at me. She's writing something in the glitter-glue still.

"Daddy, it was Doedoe's idea." Lyla stands up on the table and that's when I see that she has stickers all over her shirt, glitter on her shirt, marker all over her fingers...she's a mess. "We...she help me write a letter to mommy. And we gonna gibbit to her. We gonna...mail letters to mama!" She hands me a purple balloon. "Wiff balloons...cause they go in the sky and that's where mama lives."

"This was Jojo's idea?" I pick Lyla up and put her on my hip while she nods the answer to my question. Now that I watch Jo, I see that the envelope she's writing on has Lyla's writing on it. It says "To: Mommy" and "From: Lyla" on it. Jo's just tracing over the purple letters with glitter-glue. In the corner of the envelope, it says "Lyla I. Karev, 806 Pembroke Drive, Millerton, FL 32501." And in the middle of the envelope, it says "Mommy Jenna Karev, Heaven." It has a sticker "stamp" in the corner and it's actually addressed like an actual envelope. So she had Lyla write Jenna a letter...and she had her decorate it...and she's gonna stick it in an envelope that's actually addressed, attach said envelope to a balloon, and let Lyla mail it to her mom? "Jojo's pretty smart, isn't she?" Lyla nods in agreement. "...Daddy has to use the bathroom, I'll be back." I put Lyla back down on the table and leave out of the kitchen. I walk towards the back of the house and instead of going to the downstairs bathroom, I hide out in the laundry room for a second.

I rest my elbows on top of the dryer and bury my face in my hands. I take a hard breath and take a moment to collect myself before I go back out there with the two of them. I can't believe she did that. I can't believe Jo thought to do that. That was extremely...extremely thoughtful of her. Not to mention brilliant...but thoughtful nonetheless. I don't know what to say to her for that. To put it simply...Jo's amazing. There's no other way to put it, no other words to say it, no other way I could express how I feel about what she just did. I clear my throat, swipe away the little bit of tears that fell and pull myself together. I really can't believe Jo did that. I take another deep breath and leave out of the laundry room. When I go back to the kitchen, Jo's blowing up a purple balloon and Lyla's showering the folded up piece of paper in kisses. "Lemme see what you wrote, Ly." I hold my hand out for it and she gives it one last kiss before she hands it to me. I open it up and read it. I can tell Jo wrote it. Her handwriting is really, really neat.

 _Dear mommy,_

 _Hi mommy. How are you doing? I miss you. What are you doing up there in the sky? Is Heaven nice? Daddy said that Heaven is pretty. He said I can see you again one day if I'm really, really, really good until I get old. I wanted to write you a letter because I miss you and I want to talk to you. I talked to you last night but you didn't answer so my friend Jojo told me I could write to you. Is it fun being an angel? I hope you have fun. I've been having lots of fun with Daddy and Pappy and sometimes Grammy and my new friend Jojo. When you get this, I hope you smile when you see it. I hope you have lots of tea parties with your angel friends in the sky. Daddy said Heaven is really fun and he said you're having parties up there. Guess what? I cut off my Barbie's hair. I wanted her to look like you so I cut it off. Don't tell Dada. I'm not supposed to play with scissors but I did and my Barbie looks beautiful now. I have to go now because we're running out of room on the paper so bye bye mommy. I will write another letter to you again in a little while. Maybe daddy can write one to you too._

 _Love you mommy so so so so much._

 _Lyla._

She signed her own name in her little chicken-scratch handwriting at the bottom of the letter. She must've told Jo what to write down and Jo wrote it for her. Some of the things said in that letter are things that only Lyla would think to say. I fold the letter back up and give it a kiss too. I hand it back to Lyla. "That was very nice. I'm sure mommy will smile a lot when she reads it." I give Lyla a kiss on her forehead and watch her hand Jo the letter. Still avoiding eye contact with me, Jo stuffs the letter in the envelope and seals it with a sticker.

"You wanna kiss the balloon? You can send your mommy a kiss too...here, kiss it." Jo holds the balloon in front of Lyla's face and Lyla gives it a big kiss. "Okay, come on...we have to go mail it." She tied a strand of white yarn around the end of the balloon and now, she's currently layering tape upon tape upon tape to tape the string to the envelope. Lyla holds her arms out and Jo picks her right up but puts her back down on the floor and hands her the balloon. "Hold onto it really tight until we get ready to go mail it, okay?" Lyla excitedly nods her head and happily skips towards the door. Jo follows behind her at a slower pace and I follow her. Jo opens the door for Lyla and Lyla runs out to the porch. "Come on, we have to let it go out here in the yard so it doesn't get stuck on a tree or anything..." She helps Lyla down into the yard. "You ready?" Lyla nods her head. "Okay, 1...2...3..." Lyla lets the balloon go and it floats all the way up into the sky. "Tell it bye, Lyla...tell it bye."

"Bye bye balloon!" Lyla waves at it and watches it as it floats higher and higher. "Buh bye!" She jumps up and down and keeps waving. "Buh bye!" Jo reaches down and strokes Lyla's hair. I watch a gentle, uneasy smile spread across Jo's face before she turns and starts walking back towards the porch. I make it seem like I'm looking at my daughter watching the balloon disappear into the elevation of the sky but I'm actually looking at Jo.

I'm not looking at the fact that her jeans are low-riding hiphuggers that expose her lower back. No, I'm not paying attention to the fact she's wearing a black and brown cheetah print tank top and her hair is straight today. I'm still trying to find a way to tell her what an amazing thing she did for my daughter today. She climbs he steps to the porch and walks right by me without a word and without eye contact. Lyla's still watching the balloon float away and before Jo can disappear into the house, I reach over and grab her arm to stop her.

She stops walking and looks at me. We actually make eye contact but we don't say anything to each other. I'm holding onto her arm. My hand is wrapped around the fold in her arm, just underneath her elbow. Since she stopped walking and I don't think that she's gonna start again, I slide my hand down her arm and stop at her wrist. She catches my drift and turns her hand around. I slide mine down a little more and our fingers actually interlock. She squeezes my hand and this time, she doesn't pull away. Lyla's head is all the way tilted back and she's still looking at the sky even though the balloon is long gone since the wind is crazy today. "Thank you." I whisper to her.

"...You're welcome." She says aloud before shaking her hand out of mine. I think she did it because Lyla stopped looking up at the sky. She disappears into the house and I follow her. I don't think Lyla's ready to come in the house yet. I think she still wants to linger outside to see if she can see the balloon. I raise up on my tiptoes and put the doorstop on so the door is propped open and Lyla can come in whenever she wants to. I'm not worried about her going out through the gate because the latch is way too high for her to reach now. I moved it up after she ran away. When I get back into the house, I see that Jo is busily cleaning up my kitchen.

"...Where did you get that idea?" I start to help her out. She shrugs her shoulders and bawls up the dirty newspaper. "Well that was brilliant. Thank you." She nods and throws the newspaper away. "...I thought we were past the not-speaking thing..." She leans against my refrigerator and looks at me like she's trying to concentrate on melting my head off or something. "Well thank you, Jo." I scratch the back of my head. "And I hope this doesn't affect you coming to Disney World with us. I hope you still want to go...and sorry."

"What are you sorry for?" She looks genuinely confused. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Well, I'm sorry for-"

"We don't have to do this." She grabs her cell phone off the counter, shoves it in her pocket and starts moving towards the door again, like she's going home. I should've known Jo was going to shut the conversation down before it even started. It had to deal with feelings and I know Jo doesn't do feelings very well. I thought I was making a breakthrough with her for a second but no. She' right back to her robot self again. She just doesn't do feelings at all. "We don't have to talk about this, we don't have to do this. It's fine, Alex. Nothing happened...we can just.. go back to normal. Nothing happened." She clears her throat. "See you later?"

"See you later, Jo."

* * *

 **A/N:** Hey guys, I won't be updating tomorrow or Monday. I definitely won't update tomorrow but I might be able Monday. It's nothing to do with hateful or negative reviews, I'm just going out of town for a couple days because I have to take my college placement exams and I have college orientation too. I'm just going to be busy. I'm leaving early tomorrow morning and I won't be back until late Monday night. So definitely no update tomorrow and MAYBE no update Monday either. I just didn't want you guys to think I abandoned the story or decided to take a break. So yeah, that's the deal.

& to the reviewer named Sarah: YOU ARE KILLING ME HERE. lol. I NEED you to make an account, a tumblr, a twitter SOMETHING. I like...love you and I wanna talk to you so, so, so bad. I want to reply to some of your reviews and I get so pissed every time I remember that you're just a GUEST. Omfg you're killing me. I'm literally dying! I love you so much and I can't talk to you because you don't have an account. I hate having to thank you and tell you how much I appreciate you in Author's Notes. Grrr, I hate you so much for this. Lol. Make an account someday so I can worship you properly. :D


	22. Happy

"I swear I haven't forgotten about you. I've just been busy lately." I brace the phone to my ear using my shoulder while I tear off the plastic to open up the pink and yellow tissue paper I bought earlier this morning. Admittedly, I've been ignoring her phone calls for the last two days. I just haven't been feeling like talking to her. As I've said before, I actually have to be in the mood to talk to my mother and needless to say, I haven't been in the mood to talk to her for a couple days now. When she called me ten minutes ago, I thought about ignoring her call again and just telling her that I didn't have the money to pay my phone bill, hence the reason why I haven't been answering in a while. If I had told her that though, all she would have done is send me money that I don't really need and go off on a rant about how I should open my mouth and ask for money if I need help. I weighed the pros and the cons in my mind and the cons of lying and telling my mom that I couldn't pay my phone bill outweighed the pros so I just answered the phone. She yelled at me, of course, but it's nothing like it probably would've been had I told her that I needed more money. "With work, mom. I've been working like crazy and actually trying to befriend people here. It's not all fun and games…I _do_ have a job, you know."

"Yes, but didn't I specifically tell you to call me on The Fourth of July, Josephine?" Her voice returns to its usual naggy type of tone and I roll my eyes. Sometimes my mom mistakes me for a teenager. There are times when she thinks I'm still an 18 year old college student that she has to keep up with on a day-to-day basis. I admit that when I was in college, I was a bit lackluster and clueless about things so it was pretty essential for my mom to call me and remind me that she stuck money in my account for food, make sure I was checking my college email regularly and things like that. It took me a while to actually become competent, independent and do those things on my own. But I'm a 29 year old woman now. I have my own life and I don't think I need to call her every single day. "Look Jo, I know you don't think it's important to keep in touch with me. I know you have your own life now and I'm not angry at you for not including me in your life. I just wish you'd take some damn initiative and act like you actually want to talk to me sometimes. Now, I told you to call me on The Fourth and I thought we agreed on that. What day is today, Jo?" I just keep quiet and open up a piece of yellow tissue paper. "What day is today, Josephine?" She asks me again.

"It's the 12th." I mumble into the receiver and open up the bright pink gift bag I also bought in addition to the tissue paper. This is why I don't answer her phone calls. Every time I talk to her, she finds something new to chew my ass out about. We're a thousand miles away from one another and she's still yelling at me like we're under the same roof. She really knows how to annoy me sometimes. I shove the yellow paper down into the gift bag and fold it back so that none of the paper is covering the face of any of the princesses that are on the bag. I found a Disney princess bag and it seemed fitting, considering the fact that she's going to Disney for her birthday. "Look mommy, I…"

"Was I done talking, Jo?" She demands. I mumble "no ma'am" and stick a piece of pink paper over the yellow piece. "So what did you end up doing for The Fourth?" Her voice is calmer this time around. "Did you work?"

"No, the restaurant was closed on The Fourth so I didn't work. I just ended up…" I glance at the clock on my stove before I say anything else. I haven't exactly spoken to my mom about Alex yet. I haven't told her about him, I haven't told her that he's my friend and I haven't told her about the fact that I watch his kid. I surely haven't told her that I'm going to Disney World with them. When I see that it's only 12:15 in the afternoon, I decide that I have enough time to explain to her about Alex. I need ample time to tell my mom about him because I know my mother and I know she's going to have so many unnecessary questions. I'm trying to be in bed, asleep by 9:00 tonight since we have an early flight tomorrow morning though. I still have a bunch of crap to do before I go to work at 1:30 though. I need to pack my suitcase, shower when I come home and be in bed all before 9:00. I don't get off of work until 7:30 though, so I'm pushing it. I wasn't even supposed to work today. This girl named Bridget called in sick so Tony called me and asked me if I could come cover her shift until 7:30. Who am I to say no? I'm still relatively new at The Lobster Hut. "…So I don't think I told you, but I met this guy." She gasps into the phone before she even lets me explain. "Not that kind of guy though, mom. Not even close." I switch the phone to my other ear and pick up the gifts I bought for Lyla today at the store when I took the 10:30 bus into town. Since it's the only flat thing I bought her, I lay the Doc McStuffins coloring book I bought her down at the bottom of the bag. "His name is Alex and he's my friend. He has a daughter and you know how I am with little kids… So I ended up spending the day with him and his daughter. They had this little…festival thing on the boardwalk and we went to that."

"Well that's good. I'm glad you got out of the house and I'm glad you had somebody to go with you." As if she can see me, I nod my head and put the 64-pack of crayons I bought for Lyla on top of her coloring book. I haven't really spoken to Alex much in the last week. The last time I talked to him in person was on the 5th. Today's the 12th. I did text him earlier though. I asked him what size Lyla wore in clothes and I asked him if there was anything specific I should get her for her birthday. He told me not to buy her anything but eventually, he told me that I could buy her anything in size 4T and underwear because she's getting a potty chair for her birthday. I bought her an outfit, a coloring book, crayons, a pack of pink and purple underwear and this Koala bear toy that's supposed to drink a fake bottle and move around, since she likes animals. "This Alex…he's not gonna get you into trouble, is he? You know how men with children can be…that child's mother doesn't have an issue with you paling around with him and his baby?"

"Oh, no mom…" I prop the bear toy box against the side of the bag and fold up the outfit I bought her. It's pretty cute. It's a pretty cute outfit for me to have gotten it at Walmart, I mean. The shirt is light purple with a big sparkly peace sign on the front and the shorts I got her to match are made of a sweatpants kind of material and they have a sparkly peace sign across the butt. Alex told me that I didn't have to get her anything for her birthday but honestly, I wouldn't feel right if I didn't. I take up a lot of time with Lyla…she's like my little baby sister. What kind of person would I be if I didn't get her something for her birthday? "Alex's wife, she passed away. So you don't have to worry about me…stepping on anybody's toes or anything like that." I finish packing the gift bag by putting the small package of underwear on top of her clothes and cover the top of the gifts with a piece of pink tissue paper. "Believe me mom, if he still had a…a _baby mama_ , I wouldn't even be his friend. I wouldn't put myself in that kind of position, especially when I already don't know people here."

"I've taught you so well." She laughs into her end of the phone which makes me laugh too. Now she's sounding like my normal mother. My mom and I have exactly this kind of relationship. She's more of a friend than a mother sometimes and we can laugh with each other since we share the same lewd sense of humor. "So I was thinking about coming down there sometime next week." My mom also knows how to be serious when the time calls for it, so all sense of humor is gone from her voice and she's talking to me in a more serious manner. "I finished up all my final grades, sent all my seniors' transcripts to the guidance counselor and I'm officially out of work for the summer. So how's next week for you? I was thinking of maybe flying out this Friday, that way I'd be there by Saturday. I'd leave on Wednesday morning."

"Not this Friday, mom. I won't be home this Friday." I pick up the newly packed gift bag and stick it on the counter next to my fridge so it's somewhere where I won't forget it tomorrow morning. "Um…So yeah, my friend Alex…" I clear my throat. I have a feeling she's going to have something smart to say about me going to Disney with Alex and Lyla. I just have a feeling. "Well, he's my neighbor too and he works a pretty tough job. And since his wife passed away, he needs someone to watch his daughter sometimes. And like I said, you know how I am with little kids. So I watch his daughter for him from time to time, just to help him out. And me and the little girl…we bonded a little bit and she really likes me. So he's taking her to Disney World for her birthday and he offered to take me with them…just as he friend since she really likes me and stuff. So I won't be home on Friday. We're leaving tomorrow and we won't get back until next Saturday, I believe. We're staying for a week he said…"

"Wait, back it up for a moment, Jo." I've heard enough lectures from my mom over the last 29 years to know when she's about to go on a rant. Her voice gets all firm and she starts saying my name over and over again at the end of every sentence. She's about to go on a rampage…so I just lean against the counter and prepare myself. Part of me thinks that I should just put the phone on the counter and let her bitch and complain while I go get dressed for work. I won't do that because it's seriously disrespectful but I'm not completely above that. I did it once back in college. She was bitching about how I exhausted my 12 meals a week meal plan in three days and I just put the phone down on my bed and let her complain while I took a shower. "You're going to _Disney_ World with that man? Jo, do you know how e _xpensive_ that is? And you're just letting him pay for it all, aren't you? Do you realize how _irresponsible y_ ou're being? I _know_ the little girl probably loves you because I've seen the way you act with children but Jo, that's _enough._ I can't be _lieve_ you even said yes. Jo, you don't need to take _handouts_ from _anybody._ How are you ever going to repay him? You know you have to. How _dare_ you…have I not taught you _anything?_ You know _better_ than that."

I roll my eyes at her overuse of exaggeration and drowned out emphasis on random words and sigh. And she wonders why I ignore her phone calls half the time. I can't stand hearing her constant bitching and moaning at me. Now all of a sudden, me accepting a trip to Disney World somehow makes me irresponsible? That somehow translates to my mom never taught me anything? God, I don't know how I'm going to take her being here for days straight. I know telling her not to come is pointless because she'll come anyway. She's dead set on coming down here. Nothing I say or do will make her change her mind about that. "Mom, stop…I already tried to get out of it. I tried. I told him that I wouldn't feel right, I offered to pick up some extra shifts and pay my way and he said no. He offered to pay for me, mom. And it's not like I'm his charity case, that's not how it is. He asked me because he needs someone that'll relate to his daughter on a girl-to-girl level. I'm basically his daughter's only friend and he's asking me to go as her friend. It's not like that, so you can stop now."

"How old is this man, Jo?" He sighs into the receiver.

"30." I look at the clock again. "Look mom, I have to go. I have to be at work in a little while and I'm not even dressed or anything. I'll…I'll call you sometime tomorrow or something. I have to go."

"Don't say you're going to call me when you know good and well that you're not going to." She sounds like she might be angry. "Just…leave your phone on. Text me or something."

"I will." I finally hang up the phone and clunk my head down on the counter that I'm leaning up against. I really can't stand talking to her sometimes. I love her to death…I'd do anything in this world for that woman but Jesus Christ, does she have to talk that damn much? And when she does talk, does she have to constantly bitch and moan and complain? I'm _really_ not looking forward to having her spend a couple days here. I sigh and reluctantly go back to my bedroom so I can get dressed for work. I have a feeling that this day of work is going to drag. It's going to be a pain in my ass because I already know that I'm just going to continuously watch the clock and hopelessly wait for it to be 7:30 so I can go home.

I don't know if I'm excited or dreading Disney. The little kid inside of me is excited as hell to go to Disney. The little kid inside of me has always wanted to go to Disney World. But the regular me, the Jo? Well she doesn't feel like spending a week with no one but Alex. Okay, as much as I hate to admit it, I kind of miss him. I haven't seen him in seven days, since I left his house from the day I babysat Lyla. I haven't seen his face, heard his voice or been in his presence in seven whole days. And I miss him like crazy. But I don't know how mentally prepared I am to spend a week straight with him. I'm going to be with him for an entire _week._ If I start feeling weird around him, feeling like I can't face him…I won't have anywhere to run to. We're going to be sharing a hotel room which means I'm going to be with him 24/7. I won't have anywhere to run, anywhere to hide, anywhere for me to just take a free minute. That worries the hell out of me. Sometimes I need a break from Alex. Sometimes…Sometimes I can't breathe when he looks at me and when he talks to me. I don't know what the hell I want from him either. I don't know if I want him to look at me or if I want him to ignore me. I can't tell if I want him to shut up or talk to me. I don't know if I'd rather be holding his hand or if I'd rather be a thousand feet away from him. I just don't know.

It's like I can't breathe when he looks at me, when he talks to me and when he touches me…so I pull away and I don't want to deal with that. But when he's away from me…it's even worse. I feel like I'm doing the right thing by staying away and only coming around as needed. Because if it were up to me, I'd probably be over Alex's house every day. I could find any possible reason to walk down there. I find myself trying, actually. I'll go in my fridge and look at a pack of butter and I'll find myself thinking that maybe Alex needs butter and I should take him some. Or I'll see something and I'll think that maybe Lyla would like to have it and I have to stop myself from leaving the house. These past seven days, I've caught myself trying to walk down Alex's house for no reason at all. But I'm trying to keep it so that I only come around when I'm needed. So I find myself waiting by the phone, hoping that maybe he'll either ask me to go to the gas station with him or hoping he'll ask me to watch Lyla. I miss him like crazy but I'm not ready to lose my breath around him for an entire week when I won't have anywhere to go without him so I can catch it. I can't breathe when he looks at me, touches me or talks to me but I literally suffocate when he's away from me. I can't mind a happy medium with this. And this is a prime example as to why feelings suck.

I've officially been living in Florida for a month and I've officially known Alex for a month. I find that I hardly ever think about Chamberlain anymore, which is a bit contradictory to the fact that I think about Mark at least once a day. I don't know how I think about Mark but manage to keep my thoughts about Chamberlain at bay. I haven't spoken to Mrs. Robinson since the second week I moved here. I called her the other day and she didn't answer. I thought it would bother me more than it has but I'm actually fine with not hearing from her. I think I'm better off if I just cut off all ties with Massachusetts. I'm finally at peace here in Florida and there's a piece of me that misses Chamberlain but the rest of me knows that living here is the best possible thing for me. I didn't come to Florida in search of a family or people to spend the rest of my life with, but I think I might have found that anyway. I wasn't looking for it but it seems to have found me. I found Luke, Lucille, Kaylee, Macy, Alex and Lyla. I'm happy here, aren't I?

Despite the responsibilities I have lingering the back of my mind that I'll have to deal with eventually, I'm happy. I imagine that eventually, when I'm in my late 30s or early 40s, I'll probably want to find love again. And when it's far too late for me to even consider anything, I'll probably realize that my life is empty because I want to have a baby. And I'll have to tell someone someday that I killed my husband and just barely escaped jail time for it. And I'll have to eventually deal with the fact that I _can't_ have a baby. And I'll die alone, most likely. I guess I can always cherish the fact that I loved once and that's more than what some people can say. I'll cherish the fact that I actually felt what it was like to be pregnant. Granted, I didn't know that what I was feeling was pregnancy…otherwise, I wouldn't have drowned myself in six shots of Tequila and three Martinis. Besides, anyone that drinks while they're pregnant doesn't deserve to have a baby. Anyway, those facts are lingering in the back of my head and I'll have to deal with them eventually. But I'm happy, for the most part…as happy as I can be for someone that murdered their husband and their kid, I mean.

Is it normal to feel guilty about being happy though? Because I do. I feel guilty that I ran. I up and left Chamberlain, came to Florida, been in Florida for a month and I'm starting feel like this could be a normal life for me. I wouldn't say I'm as happy as I've been in the past but I'm certainly not as miserable as I was in Chamberlain. I feel guilty about that. Mark won't ever have the chance to be happy again and that's because of me. I guess me being happy isn't really the only thing I feel guilty about though. I also feel guilty that I wanted to hold Alex's hand…and I feel even worse about the fact that I miss him. I try to rationalize that the way I miss Alex isn't the same way I miss Mark but in truth, it is. I miss Alex so much that all I've been doing is thinking about him. My mind's been preoccupied with Alex-filled thoughts and every time I think about something, I immediately want to share it with Alex. It was like that with Mark at first too…a little worse though. I feel horrible about that. What kind of sick person replaces their dead husband? I'm such a shitty person.

But that doesn't change the fact that I miss Alex.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I never realized how much I hate packing until I had to pack a bag that's supposed to last me a week. I think I might have made a fatal error by booking our stay at Disney to be a week long because this is seriously too much. I honestly don't think a week will be long enough to do everything that Lyla's going to want to do, but if I would've stayed any longer than a week, I might've had to off myself eventually. I'm eight pairs of shorts deep, seven pairs of pajama pants, seven pairs of underwear, three pairs of socks, sneakers, sandals, eight shirts, seven pajama shirts…I have so much shit shoved into this suitcase already and I haven't even began to shove Lyla's stuff in here yet. Packing for a week is going to be the death of me, I can see it now. A week probably won't be long enough to get through the entire park though. There are six different parks in Disney World. When we get there tomorrow, we're going to start out in Epcot. I looked around and found that most, if not all, of the character meet and greets are done in Epcot. I want Lyla to meet all her favorite characters tomorrow, that way I get that out of the way quickly and we have the rest of the time exploring the actual park. After Epcot, we'll go to The Magic Kingdom on the second day. The third day, we'll try out the Blizzard Beach waterpark. She'll probably want to swim by then. Fourth day, I'm thinking Animal Kingdom and fifth day, Typhoon Lagoon. On the sixth day, I think we'll do Hollywood Studios and on the last day, we'll relax in the hotel until our flight leaves. I would like to do a park a day.

"Daddy…why we have to do this?" Lyla carries a small pile of her clothes over to me. She's helping me pack because I told her if she was good and helped me pack up all our stuff, I'd let her open up one of her birthday presents. My dad brought over his gift to her earlier and I haven't given it to her just yet. It's just one of those toilet adapters for little kids and a Cinderella Barbie doll. Nurse Michelle slipped something extra in that bag for her too. I looked in there and saw a little pink and silver princess crown for her to wear at the park. We've been dropping subtle hints to Lyla about where we're actually going but she hasn't caught on. Good. I want her to be surprised. "This make no sense." She drops the clothes on top of the pile I'm currently putting in the suitcase. "Why you have to work?"

"I have to work to make money." I start cramming her clothes into the suitcase as well. For the last two days, I've been dropping small hints to her. Yesterday, I told her that we needed to watch Cinderella and Snow White because we were going to need to learn everyone's names. She looked at me like I was nuts and I told her that we might need to know everyone's names someday. I was pretty much watching it for my own benefit. After I came home from work at 3:30 yesterday, I spent the better half of my evening sitting on the couch and watching princess movies. So far, I learned that there's Grumpy, Dopey, Sneezy, Doc, Bashful, Happy and Sleepy. I also learned that Cinderella's mice are named Jaq and Gus. Oh, and I asked her if she could meet any princess in the world, who it would be and she said it would be Elsa? So I had to go watch Frozen and now I know that Elsa's going to be the platinum blonde one with the blue dress.

"I have to go?" She sits down on the floor next to me and crosses her legs. "Daddy, I no want to go…you gonna leave me all the time." She pokes her lip out. "Who I gonna play wiff all the time if you working?"

"That's why we're bringing Jojo." I stuff her socks in the corner of the suitcase and stand up. I packed her ten shirts since she's bound to get dirty, two swimsuits, socks and shoes since we're going to be walking, ten pairs of pants/skirts and an entire package of pull-ups. I also have a few pairs of underwear in there for her but I don't know if she's actually going to use them. I'm going to bring the potty adapter. It's not an actual potty chair like my dad was going to buy. I told him not to buy an entire chair. Potty chairs are for kids that are younger than Lyla. She's going to be four, she doesn't need a chair. My dad bought one of those baby seats you strap over the big toilet seat to make sure the seat is small enough for her butt to fit on it and not fall in and I think that's how I'm going to train her. "You can play with Jojo while daddy's doing his work." She rolls her eyes at me and sighs.

Speaking of Jo, I should probably call her and see what she's doing. I don't know if she's working today or not so if I call her, I'm taking a serious chance. I just haven't seen her in a while. We text messaged this morning when she asked me what she should get Lyla for her birthday but that was briefly. I also asked her if she was all packed up and she said she was almost, so I guess that means she's still coming. Well, she kind of has to come at this point. I already booked the hotel for three people, bought three sets of park tickets and three easy passes. I'm beginning to think that things between me and Jo will never normalize again though. I haven't seen her since I tried to talk to her about us holding hands in my kitchen and that was seven days ago. I think I might actually miss her. I miss talking to her and stuff and I guess…I don't know, I guess I miss just seeing her face.

I've been sitting outside every morning to see if maybe I could catch her walking to the bus stop but no such luck. I can't think of a good reason as to why I should walk down her house. Truth is, I just want to go down there and see her. But I can't show up at her doorstep with no reason to be there so I just don't go see her. Instead, I sit on the porch and hope that she has to catch the bus into town for something. I haven't needed her to watch Lyla, Lyla hasn't ran away and I haven't had to ask her anything that I couldn't just text her. I don't have a reason to walk down there and I wish I did. I'm looking forward to spending a week at Disney with her but at the same time, I'm also dreading it. Honestly, I don't think anything's going to happen between us again. I don't think we're going to ever hold hands again, I don't think we'll ever feel weird when we look at each other so I'm probably worrying for nothing. But on the off chance that something does happen between us, I'm dreading that. I'm dreading it because if something weird happens, I'm the kind of person that wants to talk about it. I want to talk about it and I want to know if she feels the same way as I feel. But Jo? She doesn't do feelings at ALL. She'll deny it, push it to the side, act like it doesn't matter, act like it's nothing. She'll do that until she can't do that anymore and that pisses me off. Because Jo refuses to act like a normal, feeling human being half the time, I imagine it'll be horribly awkward if something does happen between the two of us. I don't know.

I've known that girl for a month. Two days ago marked the first day I talked to her, the first time she waited on me and gave Lyla her name tag. It's been a month since I've known her and I still have no idea how to figure her out. Jo's so complex. It's like one moment, she's sitting on a bench with me and opening up about her childhood, her dead husband and her life before she came here to Millerton. Everything's fine that moment, everything's perfect. Then the next moment, she refuses to look at me, she pushes me away and acts like we never held hands. She tries so hard to make herself seem like such a horrible person. She tries to get me to believe that there's nothing to her, that she's a robot and she's tough but I can so see past that. After what she did for my daughter…there's no way she'll ever be able to convince me that she's an unfeeling, coldhearted bitch. I don't think she even realizes exactly what she did for Lyla. I do, and that's why I'm still amazed by her. I'm still at a loss for words over what she did for my daughter.

Jo did more than help Lyla write a dumb little letter to her mother. She did more than sending that balloon up to the high heavens, only for it to come crashing down in some place we probably won't ever know about. Jo probably thinks all she did was help Lyla write a letter but she did so much more than that. She helped my daughter grieve. I've noticed a really big change in Lyla's behavior and it's only been a week since she let the balloon go. She talks about mailing letters to her mommy all the time now, but she's never sad about it. She wants to tell her mommy about everything that's happening and Jo really put it in perspective for her that Jenna's never coming back. She made that a hell of a lot easier for her to deal with too. Like I said, Jo probably thinks all she did was help her write a letter to her mother. But actually, she helped my daughter grieve, come to terms with the fact that her mother is gone and she helped her understand that although Jenna's gone, she's never really…gone. Jo did an amazing thing for my daughter and I'll always be grateful to her for that. Nothing anyone says to me can make me change how I feel about Jo. And after seeing what she did for Lyla, I really hope to keep Jo as a female figure in her life for as long as possible. It just sucks that things between the two of us are all weird when the relationship she has with Lyla is turning out to be a beautiful one.

"Hey Ly…" I stand up off the floor and hold my hand out for her to take it. "Since you were so good for me and since you helped me out…you wanna go open your birthday gift now?" She nods her head and stands up quickly. She doesn't even grab my hand. She leaves my hand bare and darts towards the living room, where her gift bag has been since my dad brought it over this morning. That's another thing I've noticed that's changed about her. I think Jo might be starting to break Lyla's babyish habits. She didn't feel the need to hold my hand. Now I know that it's a small thing, it's miniscule and it's probably nothing. But it's something for me. Lyla told me how Jo took her to the store and refused to carry her. I know all about that. And she hasn't really felt the need to hold my hand so much since then. I stick my empty hand in my pocket and make my way towards the steps. Lyla's already down the steps and probably in the living room by now. When I get to the living room, she's already digging in the bag. I sit down on the couch and let her go. "'Lemme know what you got."

"I gotted…" She picks out the potty adapter first. It's bright pink and it has a bunch of pictures of Dora the Explorer on it. I didn't get a chance to really see it, I just trusted my dad to get the right one. I think he did good. It's cushioned, it has the snap-on handles on the sides and it matches the stool I have up in the closet. I got her a step-stool so she doesn't have to struggle to step up onto the potty when she has to go. "What this?" She holds it out to me. "It…Dowa…It got Dowa on it. What is it, Dada?"

"It's a potty seat." I stand up and take it from her. "I'm gonna put this on the potty in my bathroom so you can sit down and use the potty when you have to go pee pee and stuff. Are you gonna use it?" I pinch the cushion part to make sure it's soft enough for her. She nods her head at me and goes right back to the bag. I knew she wouldn't be interested in the potty seat. I gotta find a way to make going pee and poop on the potty fun for her. Maybe Jo will have an idea how. "What else did you get?"

"Cinnawella!" She holds the doll up and waves it around. "I telled Pappy I wanted it and him got it for me!" She sits down on the floor with the doll between her legs and starts pulling on the packaging. "Daddy, her come too? Huh? I take her wiff me?"

"Yeah, she can come." I pick up the bag and grab the tiara from the bottom of the bag. She's just interested in the doll, like I knew she would be. "You can take her everywhere with you when we get to where we're going tomorrow. You have to promise me you'll take baby Cinderella everywhere…because she might get to see her mommy sometime."

"On TV? Doedoe will watch Cinnawella wiff me on the TV and her will see her mama on the TV, wight?" She's still fighting with the packaging. I think about taking it off of her and helping her open it up but I think I might have to fight with her if I take the damn doll off of her. I'll let her fight with it until she asks me for help. "Her wants to see her mama…her miss her mama real bad, daddy. We watch her mama wight now?"

"No, we're not gonna watch her mommy right now." I tear the packaging off the tiara and stick all the tissue paper and packaging back in the gift bag. "She can see her mommy tomorrow when we get to where we're going, alright?" She slowly nods her head and pulls on a tab that should open the box up for her. I bend down and stick the tiara on her head. "You're gonna need this tomorrow too." I just wish I could tell her. I just wanna break the ice. I'm getting excited to tell her. I can just imagine how happy she's gonna be. Damn, I just wanna tell her. But if I tell her right now, she's not going to sleep tonight. So now I have no choice but to wait. She'll get the picture once we get on the shuttle bus that's taking us to our hotel. I booked the hotel closest to the park so we can just walk to the park. We're staying in the Disney's Beach Club Resort, which is about half a mile away from the entrance to Epcot. They have buses that'll take us to the park but I'd rather walk because Lyla will be able to see and hear the park before we actually get there if we walk. Once we're done with Epcot, we'll get bused to the other parks. But since we're going to Epcot first, we'll walk the first day.

"Why I gonna need this?" She reaches up on top of her head and touches the crown. "…Is Doedoe gonna have a tea party with me?" I nod my head at her. She's really not expecting to go to Disney. I really hope I make her happy. "Yay! I show her my new Cinnawella too…and we watch Cinnawella's mama on TV and maybe my mama…" Her voice trails off. "…Dada?" She stops fighting with the doll's packaging and looks up at me. "…I can always…get a new mama…wight?"

I bite my lip. I always figured she'd ask me about a new mother someday…I just wasn't expecting today to be the day. "…I don't think so, Ly. I think it's just gonna be us." I shake my head. "Getting a new mommy…" I sigh and kneel down to look her in her eye as I explain this. "Getting a new mommy isn't easy. First, daddy has to get someone that he really loves…and then he has to make sure you really love her too. And that's not easy, baby girl. That's hard. Because daddy would never give you a new mommy that you didn't like. So I think…" I put my forehead against hers. "I think it's just gonna be you and me kid." I pucker my lips and she takes my hint and kisses me.

"But daddy…" She goes right back to messing with her doll after she gives me a kiss. "How…" She looks up at me again. "How about Doedoe? I like her…"

"I like Jojo too, Ly." I sit down on the floor and finally take the doll off of her so I can open it for her. "But I don't really think Jojo's new mommy material, you know? I think Jojo's a good buddy for you. I don't think Jojo would make a very good new mommy." I like how she thinks that me falling in love, getting married and getting her a new mommy is so easy. I wish it was that easy to forget Jenna and fall in love all over again. I gotta be realistic here. It'll probably never happen. Lyla will probably never get a new mommy but as long as I have something to do with it, she'll always have Jo as a friend in her life. I can't see myself ever loving Jo enough to make her my wife. Jo's more of a lifelong friend. She won't open up enough for me to even visualize myself loving her. I mean sure, she's good with Lyla. She's damn good with Lyla and that's gonna be a huge part of a relationship for me from here on out. I'm never going to get in a relationship with a woman that's not good with my daughter. So yeah, Jo's good with Lyla and that's one thing off the list. But I don't see myself ever loving Jo. She's too emotionally stunted for me. Truth be told, I don't think Jo's capable of loving me either. "But Jojo's always gonna be your friend. I don't want you to think that she has to be your new mommy to be close to her because that's not true. Jojo's always gonna be your buddy. She just wouldn't make a very good new mommy."

"You fink...you fink mommy would get mad? If I getted a new one?"

"No, baby doll." I hand her the doll after I get it open for her. "Mommy would be very happy. She wouldn't get mad." I stroke her hair back. "But I don't think we're ever gonna have a new mommy around here, so don't worry about this anymore. You remember what daddy told you?"

"…I's the only wibben in your life." She recites it back to me. I told her that after she freaked out about the woman flirting with me in the supermarket. She got all sad and I told her that she's the only woman in my life and she's been using that against me ever since.

"That's right." I kiss the tip of her nose and stand back up. "Alright, now what do you want to eat for dinner today?"


	23. Coincidental

I rest my head against the wall next to the window and stare out into the bright blueness of the sky and the fluffy white clouds just outside. I wonder if I can get away with taking a nap until we get there. I got home from work at 8:00 last night and I had to pack my stuff, take a shower and eat dinner. I didn't go to bed until 10:00 last night and I had to be up at 5:30 this morning. I know it probably seems like I got enough sleep last night but I promise I didn't. I'm exhausted. I wanted to throw my phone out the window when the alarm went off this morning. We don't have a very long flight; it's only going to be an hour and 50 minute, but that's enough time for me to take a little power nap. I uncross my legs and shift my weight off my back leg to make myself more comfortable in my seat so I can take a nap. I put my head against the glass of the window and close my eyes.

I wasn't expecting Alex to give me he window seat on the plane but he offered it to me and I took it. I declined at first but he insisted so I eventually gave in and took the middle seat. He didn't actually say it, but I don't think he really wanted to sit by the window himself. I think he would prefer to sit in the seat on the edge. Some people just don't like sitting near the window on airplanes and I'm guessing he's one of those people. He surely didn't want to put Lyla by the window and I understood that. Though I can't help but wonder why he didn't want the window seat to himself…he must be weird about sitting near the window. We still haven't spoken to each other about anything that doesn't involve this trip. He came to pick me up from my house at 7:00 this morning and we both said "good morning" and that was it. We sat in silence for 45 minutes until we got to the airport. We went through airport security, through registration, through the entire process of boarding the plane and we've been on the plane for almost 20 minutes now and we still haven't said anything to each other. I really hope this trip doesn't end up being one big, fat sack of awkward all because Alex and I don't know how to communicate with each other. It would suck if Alex wasted his money on a trip that was just full of awkwardness and more so than that, it wouldn't be fair to Lyla if her trip was ruined because her father and I are two stubborn assholes.

I honestly don't think I'm going to be able to fall asleep on this plane. I think I'm just going to have to suck it up and deal with the fact that I'm sleepy. I just hope that maybe once I see the park and hear the rides and stuff, I'll just magically become un-sleepy. Alex already said that he wants Lyla to meet most of the characters today so I think we have a long day ahead of us. He let me look at the website on his phone to check out the itinerary he planned out for us. One thing we actually talked about and agreed upon is the fact that we probably shouldn't start out in Epcot like he originally wanted to. I was looking at the program in the car and it seemed like most of—not all, but most of—the character exhibits are in The Magic Kingdom for one, and for two, Cinderella's Castle is in The Magic Kingdom as well. So I think we're starting off in The Magic Kingdom instead of Epcot. I think I should've just kept my mouth shut though. Epcot's a smaller park than The Magic Kingdom and now since we're starting off there instead, I'm in for a longer day of walking than I would've been had we stayed in Epcot for the day. It's for Lyla though, so I guess I don't care much.

Since I've come to terms with the fact that I'm not going to be able to fall asleep and take a nap, I readjust my positioning in the seat I'm sitting in and sit up straight. Lyla's sitting in the chair next to me, using the food tray table to color on. Alex let her open up the birthday gift I bought for her but she's not allowed to play with the Koala bear toy on the plane, he said. So since the rest of the gift I bought her is clothes, he let her color with the coloring book and crayons I bought her. She was getting a little bit restless only 10 minutes into the flight, so Alex put a movie on with his iPad and she's watching Mulan while she colors. She's been quiet ever since he put the movie on. He did a good job with her outfit today, I must say. She's wearing a dark blue t-shirt with Snow White on it and a pair of black shorts. I was impressed with how he thought to put sneakers on her instead of sandals since she's going to be walking around. The only thing he didn't take care of is her hair. I can tell he brushed it but he didn't do much else to it. It's resting all down her back and it's perfectly straight. Sometimes I actually forget how long Lyla's hair is. She always has it up in a ponytail or pigtails or occasionally in braid and it never looks as long as it really is.

I glance at Alex from the side of my eye and spend a few moments just looking at him. He's looking down at his cell phone and texting someone. I don't know who he's texting because I can't see the name from two seats away and also because I don't really care to know who he's texting. He's wearing a green and blue striped t-shirt and a pair of blue jean shorts. He looks a lot better than I do right now, in terms of well-rested I mean. I could really keep up with the silent treatment thing we seem to have going on but I can't stop thinking about Lyla and how unfair it would be to her if the two of us ruined her birthday trip. With that little piece of knowledge tucked in the back of my mind, I turn my body slightly so that I'm facing Alex and clear my throat so I can begin to talk to him. "I thought you said your dad and his girlfriend were coming with us." I hate to be the first one to break the silence vow we have going on. I hate thinking that he could possibly view me as the weaker one, the one that can't take the silent treatment as long as he is. That's not the case, I just have more respect for his daughter than this.

As if he was waiting for me to crack, he immediately locks his phone up and puts it away. "They're flying out in two days. My dad doesn't want to stay the entire week so he's just coming out afterwards. They're staying in our hotel though." He reaches over and combs his fingers through Lyla's hair. Lyla yanks her head to the side to get him off of her and continues coloring her picture while listening intently to the movie that's playing. "I was thinking about renting a car instead of catching the bus to you know where. There's a rental shop right there at the airport…and if I rented a car, we're free to come and go as we please, you know? We don't gotta worry about catching the bus on a schedule and stuff." He turns his head towards me and we look at each other in the eyes for the first time in seven—wait, now eight—days. "What do you think?"

"I guess you're right about us coming and going as we please." I hold his gaze for a long while before I feel like I need to look away. Looking in his eyes is like cutting off my own personal air supply and I have to look away to give myself time to breathe again. I look down at the hangnail on my finger and pretend that it hasn't been there for a few days and I'm just now noticing it. Once I catch my breath and regroup, my eyes wander up and meet his again. I feel better. "What if we want to stay longer or go back to the hotel earlier? And we're stuck waiting for bus schedules? I think you might have a point about renting a car." My eyes wander again and this time, they end up on the movie that Lyla's watching. "But won't that get expensive eventually?"

"I think I brought enough to cover it." He rests his head on the headrest attached to Lyla's seat instead of on his own headrest and pretends to watch the movie. I know good and well that Alex couldn't care less about watching a silly little princess movie but he's still attempting to watch it. "I have a couple grand on my bank card and a few hundred in my wallet. If we spend more than that then we have a serious problem." He's looking down at the iPad screen and not at me so I find myself looking at him. His hair looks like he spent a lot of time brushing it this morning. His face looks like he hasn't shaved in a while but somehow, it looks neat. My fingers twitch at the urge to reach out and touch him. I have to squeeze my kneecap in order to keep my hand under control because if I let it have free reign, I'll end up running my fingers through his hair like I've always wanted to do. I roll my eyes at myself and close them. I want to touch him so badly. I bawl my hands up into fists to bear with the temptation. Unlike most girls, I'm not fighting the urge to kiss him, tear off his clothes and jump his bones right here in the plane. I'm just fighting the urge to reach over, stroke my fingers through his hair and maybe wrap my arms around him in an embrace because dammit, I missed him for eight days. I just want to touch him. I'm not like those girls that would give anything to screw him. I'm one of those girls that would give anything just to touch him right now.

In the seat next to me, Lyla yawns really big and puts down her purple crayon to rub her eyes. Ever since we got on the plane, I thought she seemed a little bit sleepy to me. The way she was getting kind of restless at first and the way she kept trying to get out of her seat and move around. She just seemed like she was cranky and irritable from being tired. Now seeing her yawn just seals the deal. She's tired. I'm a little bit thankful that she just yawned and rubbed her eyes because now I have a reason not to think about Alex and a reason to avoid looking at him. I grab the armrest that separates me and Lyla's seats and lift it up to get it out of the way. I wrap my hands around her torso and immediately, she kicks her legs out and tries to start throwing a fit but I'm not going to let her. "Lyla, stop it…" I tighten my grip around her so she doesn't fall through all her kicking and whining and pull her over onto my lap. She pulls away from me and leans forward to Alex but Alex just ignores her begging and watches me while I try to tame her. "Stop it!" She leans forward and kicks her feet hard. "Stop it right now." I kick off my flip-flop sandals and turn to the side so I can put my legs up on the now empty seat that she was sitting in.

"Get offa me!" She keeps trying to pull away but I'm relatively unfazed by it. Lyla never acts out like this and I know the only reason she is acting out is because she's sleepy. It's not even 9:00 in the morning yet. She usually doesn't get up until 10:00 or maybe even 11:00. She's more than three hours behind on her sleep so she has every reason to be tired. "Stop it, Doedoe!" She pushes me by my face and tries her hardest to get away from me. "Get offa me!"

"Shh, I know…I know." I swat her hand away from my face and hold it when she moves it. When she realizes that I'm not going to let her go, she calms down a bit and just starts crying while laying on my chest. She's reaching for Alex but he's still just ignoring her, which honestly means a lot to me. I know that sounds strange but really, it means something to me that he's willing to just ignore his daughter's tears and let me handle it. It means he trusts me enough to know that I'm not hurting his daughter and that I can handle her. I reach up on the tray she was coloring on and grab the iPad. I hold it in front of her so she can watch her movie and she stops crying instantly. She adjusts her head against my chest so she can watch it and since she has no pacifier, she sticks her thumb in her mouth. I rest my chin on the top of her head and watch the movie right along with her with my back against the wall of the plane and my feet resting on the empty chair. "You're gonna need to rest up, Lyla…" I stroke her long hair back and tuck it behind her ear. "We're gonna have so much fun today. You have to take a nap so you can handle all the fun." She nods her head. "When you wake up from your nap, you're gonna see what I'm talking about."

"No nap Doedoe…" She shakes her head and yawns again, which makes me smile. She's saying "no nap" but she's so very tired. I watch her eyes close for a moment and they never reopen. Well that was easy enough. I thought I was going to have to fight with her a little more in order to get her to sleep but she just went without an issue. I stroke her kneecaps just to ensure that she remains asleep and end up watching Mulan myself. For a moment though, I look up to see what Alex is doing. He's looking at his phone again and scrolling through something. I watch him for a few uninterrupted moments before I decide that it's time to look away.

"Am I doing something that interests you there, Jo?" He doesn't even look up from his phone but he addresses me. "Or do you just like looking at me because you think I'm pretty?"

"Just wondering what you were doing." I whisper and turn off the movie. Since Lyla's asleep, maybe I can get some sleep too. I'm probably down to only an hour nap right about now but even an hour would do me some justice. "I don't particularly like you, but…" I tuck my hair behind my ear and look at him. "I would be a little disappointed if I looked over and saw you were lying there dead…and you were being so quiet so I thought I should check…just to make sure you're alive."

"Why don't you just admit that you think I'm pretty?" Again, he locks his phone and sticks it in his pocket. That's the second time he's stopped texting or doing whatever he was doing on his phone to look at me while we're talking. I know I'm probably reading too much into it, but it sure feels like he thinks that I'm more important than any text message. He drops whatever he's doing just to look at me when I speak. It's probably just a sign of respect but I really like to think that maybe it means that I'm somewhat important to him. "You've been staring at me all plane ride and we've only been on here for 35 minutes. You think I'm pretty…why don't you just admit it?

"Whatever tickles your pickle, dude." I adjust Lyla on my chest so most of her weight is on my stomach and not on my legs and she doesn't even budge. "I guess you never thought about the possibility that maybe I could be staring because you're so ugly, huh?" I wrinkle my nose at him and he narrows his eyes at me. I start laughing softly so I don't wake up Lyla. "So…I missed you for a week…" I don't know why I just admitted that but I did. It felt so natural to say it though. It was like I felt it, I said it and I wanted him to know that I'm not some shallow girl that can actually go forever without talking to him. I guess I hope by telling him that I missed him, maybe us not talking for eight days won't happen again. If he knows that I missed him and I can't stand not talking to him for so long, maybe he'll see to it that we don't ever go that long without talking again. "What…did you and Lyla do for that week?" I try to patch it up, to make it seem like I missed both him and his daughter but I think I failed. The look on his face is tell-tale. He knows that I meant that I missed him.

"We basically just hung around. I worked, Lyla hung out with my dad, I did some last minute stuff for the trip…" He turns to the side and faces me. "I uh…" He looks down and twiddles his thumbs. "I missed you too, Jo. Missed talking to you…and stuff." He shrugs his shoulders. I bite down on my top lip and try not to think about that too much. He said he missed me though. He missed me. "Look Jo…" I purse my lips when he says "look Jo". I hate when he says that. It usually means he's about to get deep with me and I hate getting deep with him. I don't want to get deep and stuff. Why can't we just say that we missed each other and leave it at that? Why does Alex have to be so feelings-oriented? "Things don't have to be like this." I close my eyes and bang my head back against the wall. WHY does he have to do this? Why can't he just accept that I don't want to talk about this? I don't want to talk about this ever. "You don't ever have to feel like you need to stay away, okay? Things don't have to be awkward and silent and unspoken. This doesn't have to be the way things are. You're too good of a friend for things to be weird."

"I know." I lick my lips and look down at Lyla just because looking at her is easier than looking at him. "I really hope things don't have to be weird between us anymore either." I hope we can just leave it at that. I don't want to go into any more detail about anything else. I just want to leave it at exactly what it is. It's bad enough I'm starting to actually acknowledge how he makes me feel. Does he really have to make me talk about it in more detail? I don't know why it's not possible for Alex to just leave things the way they are. It's literally impossible for him to leave things as they are and forget about anything prior. It's like he always wants to pick up exactly where we left off, no matter if it was one day ago or eight days ago. I'm willing to forget and act as if past indiscretions don't exist. Why can't he do that? Why does he have to be so in touch with his feelings? Can we just leave what happened at the boardwalk and what happened at his house the following day, in the past? Please? I stop looking at Lyla and look at him again. I have to find something to say to him. If I don't find something to talk to him about, he's probably going to start asking me deep questions and I don't want that. "So…she really has no idea where we're going?"

"Not a clue." He smirks and looks at Lyla just as I look down at her too. He touches her ankle and strokes his thumb across it. Just the way he touches her, I can tell that he's in love with her. He looks at her and touches her with nothing but loving carefulness. If I'm trying to be in touch with my own feelings, then I have to admit that I probably wouldn't be as…fascinated with Alex as I've been if he wasn't so precious with Lyla. If he were a single man with nothing else attached, I probably wouldn't have looked twice at him when I waited on him at the diner. But I'm a sucker for men with kids. That's part of the reason I liked Mark so much. Back in college, the first time I saw him was when he was volunteering to do a tour of the college. Every year, Harvard lets a group of fourth graders come and tour the college and Mark volunteered to be a tour guide for one group. He was so good with the kids and that was a huge turn on for me for some reason. So seeing how Alex acts with Lyla just makes him more interesting to me. "I've been trying to drop hints though…so maybe when we actually get there, she'll realize what I was trying to say."

"What kind of hints?" I pull Lyla's hair away from her face and stare at her. She really is a beautiful kid. I bet she was a beautiful baby too. I love Lyla to death but I admit that she's a lot more pleasant when she's sleeping at times. "Were you like…indirectly telling her?"

"Sort of." He licks his thumb and wipes some purple crayon specs off her kneecap. "The other day, I told her that we needed to watch Cinderella and Snow White because I needed to learn all their names. And my dad's girlfriend bought her this tiara for her to wear and I told her she'd have to wear it for something real important…and I told her that we might be seeing her Cinderella doll's mother." He fixes her shorts to make sure her pull-up is covered by them. I wish he'd stop messing with her before he wakes her up but it's his kid, he can do whatever he wants. If she wakes up, he's dealing with her. Not me. "She wanted to wear a dress this morning but I told her that she had to wear her Snow White shirt. So I've been dropping small hints but she hasn't picked up on any of them just yet. I do wish I could just tell her though. I'm getting anxious to see her reaction."

"How do you think she's going to react? Do you think she's gonna like…be all happy or do you think she's just going to be like…'oh wow, Disney'? Are you expecting an over-the-top reaction?" I wish I could guess how I think she's going to react but I've only known Lyla for a month and that's hardly enough time for me to make inferences based on her behavior. I don't know her well enough. But if I had to try and guess based off what I know, I think she'll be quite pleased with her dad.

"If I had to guess…I think she's going to scream. I think she'll scream and she'll be too excited to do anything but go in the park. So I'm going to see if we can rent the car and maybe sneak her to the hotel without her actually seeing anything. The hotel we're staying at is literally right there next to the park so I think she might be able to see the castle from the hotel and I hope not. If she sees that castle, me and you can forget checking into the hotel. She'll bother us and freak out and she's not going to let us check in and do what we have to do at the hotel. So I'm hoping we can sneak her to the hotel without seeing anything that'll give it away."

"Well I think it's going to be hard to sneak her to a hotel that's right next to the park. I mean, there's probably signs and stuff everywhere…and isn't the hotel Disney themed too? You should probably just tell her. Or maybe…" I clear my throat. "Maybe you can just drive by the park? Maybe let her look out the window and point out the castle and stuff to her. She'll probably still think that we're just going somewhere and not there." I have an idea…I have a good idea. A smile creeps across my face. "We can just go straight to the hotel. From the airport, we can go straight to the hotel and like you said, she'll probably be able to see the castle from the hotel since it's so big. So why don't you just let her see it…and you can ask her who lives in a castle…and then you can just tell her that we're going to go visit the person that lives in the castle. She'll probably still be too excited to let us check into the hotel, but either way it goes she's going to be excited. Might as well accept that."

"Yeah, you're probably right. She's bound to see something that'll give away where we're at. And it's not like we have to do something that'll last an hour at the hotel. We're just checking in, putting our bags in the room and then we'll be out and ready to go to the park. She can wait like 20 minutes while we check in." He pats her on her butt. "I sort of can't believe we're actually going. My wife always wanted to bring her here but we wanted to wait until she was old enough to walk around, know what she's looking at and remember it. She's four now, so I think we're ready…"

"That's good that you're doing what your wife wanted to do." I sigh. "It's nice that you two were able to talk about things that you wanted for Lyla and things that you should do once she passed. It's nice that you can like…honor her wishes and stuff." I tuck my own hair behind my ear and move my leg just slightly to get the blood circulating through it. Lyla's starting to make my leg fall asleep. "Did she ever tell you everything she wanted? Did she like…have a wish list for you or something like that? Of things that she wanted you to do after she passed?"

"Not really but we talked. You know, when your wife is battling stage four cancer…you talk about a lot of stuff, especially when you can't sleep at night." He runs his hands through his hair and sighs. "We talked about a lot, actually. She just wanted me to make sure Lyla was taken care of, mostly. Things like that. She wanted me to meet someone… she made me promise her that I wouldn't spend the rest of my life alone and I did, but I don't know how well I'm going to hold up that end of the promise, you know? That's the kind of person Jenna was though. She didn't want me to be alone for the rest of my life and she really wanted me to find someone that could eventually be a mother figure to our daughter. I didn't mean to lie to her but when she was on her deathbed, I would've said anything to make her smile. So I just told her that I would. I told her that I would try to meet someone and try to get remarried and stuff but I really think I lied to her, Jo. I don't think that's ever going to happen."

"I understand and it's not your fault." I put my tongue in my cheek and take a breath. "I feel the same way. I understand what you mean. But have you ever given any thought to moving on? Have you even thought about it?" For some reason, I'm brought back to thinking that maybe Alex wants to move on. I still think he might want to move on and find somebody else but I think he won't do it for Lyla's sake. He said himself that Lyla barks at every woman that even tries to make a pass at him. I think he might be limiting himself because his daughter wants him to. I understand that Lyla's a huge part of his life and she needs to be able to relate to any girl that Alex brings home but I also think that it's unfair that he has to remain single and lonely just because Lyla wants him to. "Has the thought ever even crossed your mind? Maybe you should date…try dating."

He smirks. "Of course I've thought about moving on, Jo. I think about it all the time. I'm not bragging, but do you know how many women I could've had by now? I have women falling over me, Jo. I've been asked out more times than I care to count. And knowing that Jenna wanted me to find someone else; that thought is always there. But I don't think I'm ready to do that yet. And not only do I have to be ready to date again, but Lyla has to be ready for me to date again as well. Neither one of are ready."

"How long do you think you have to wait though, Alex? I mean seriously." I tilt my head and look at him. "I think there's a piece of you that's ready to let go of all the hurt of losing your wife and move on. I think that piece of you is ready but holding back because Lyla's not ready for you to be ready. And I know that Lyla's a big part of everything, as she should be. She should be a big part in your life. But I also don't think that you should limit yourself because she's not ready. That's a big step in every relationship anyway; meeting the child, I mean. You should date…test the waters. And if you find someone that you believe in your heart is going to be right for you and right for your daughter, then you should introduce her to Lyla and let Lyla know that you're not replacing her mom, just making yourself happy. You wouldn't do the wrong thing for Lyla, I know you wouldn't. And you should trust yourself to know that if you were to start dating, you wouldn't bring someone around that wasn't totally and completely 100% right for the both of you."

"Wow…you've done this pep talk before, haven't you?" His tone is dry and flat as if nothing I've said has had any effect on him. I narrow my eyes and shake my head. I could've saved my breath. "…I hear you, Jo." He mutters, running his fingers through his hair again. "And yeah, I wish I could move on from Jenna. I wish I could let all the pain go, I do. But…" He shrugs. "I genuinely don't know that I'm ready. I need someone that understands that I'm a little broken right now. I need someone to understand that I'm not ready to give my entire heart to them at the moment but if they stick with me, eventually I will be able to. I need someone that gets that I come with a lot of baggage, not just my daughter. Someone that understands what it's like to have loved before…and what it's like to be nervous to try and love again. I can't just jump into something serious. I need something slow. And I don't think I'm going to find any woman that is able to handle all of that."

"You never know." I shrug my shoulders and tap him on the thigh with my foot to let him know that I've got his back. I can't really touch him right now because my hands are a little preoccupied with Lyla right now but the only part of my body that I can touch him with is my feet. He looks down at my toes and chuckles. "You might find someone else. Hell, you might find that maybe your wife wasn't your soulmate or whatever. You might find that your true soulmate, the one that god or whatever has made you to be with, is actually sitting on the corner somewhere waiting to meet you. She could be on this plane right now, she could be at Disney World, she could be sitting in our hotel. Or she could be back in Millerton. Who knows? But you're not helping yourself by just sitting here and refusing to date."

"Maybe you should take your own advice sometimes, Jo." He chuckles out loud and leans forward to grab his bottle of water from the cup holder on the back of the seat in front of him. "Why don't you try dating too? Why don't you try to find your soulmate? Because I gotta tell you, he could be anywhere too. And I don't see you trying to actively date. I do see you trying to involve yourself in my love life though. Are you not interested in your own?" I roll my eyes hard. I'm just trying to help here. I'm trying to offer advice. "You really think I should date, don't you?"

"I'm thinking your time is ticking." When I talk to him this time, the sarcasm is heavy in my voice and my irritation is apparent. He doesn't have to mock my advice. I'm just trying to help him out. "I'm thinking you can't wait forever. I'm thinking it's only a matter of time before you start wanting to live your life and it's especially only a matter of time before you start having needs. I'm just saying that maybe you should find someone before you get sick of being alone and before your…manly urges start to take over."

"Sex?" He chokes for a second on his water and laughs out loud. "So you think I need to find someone to have sex with? Before I get horny one day and decide to bang a random chick off the street?" He mocks me again.

"Precisely." I grit my teeth and take a deep breath to contain my irritation. That's not exactly what I was saying but if that works for him then fine, go for it.

"I'm not bragging Jo…but I could have so much ass." He shakes his head. "I could've screwed all your coworkers, including the guy. Could've screwed half the women at my job, half the women in the supermarket…all I have to do is say the word. Don't worry about me. If I ever get horny, I have more than enough women that can fulfill that urge for me." He takes another guzzle of his water and swallows hard. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and belches softly. "I haven't had sex in…" He rolls his eyes to the ceiling as if he's thinking. "I haven't had sex in a year and two months. If I've gone this long without it, I can go forever without missing it." He grins. "And you?"

"Me?" I raise my eyebrows. "I'm a virgin. Don't know what I'm missing out on." His jaw drops and I start laughing so hard. His face is so funny right now. His jaw's on the floor, his eyes are wide and he's looking at me like I'm a weirdo. "I'm just messing with you." I wink at him. "But um…it hasn't been that long for me, but it's been a while. Haven't done it in so long I think my virginity actually came back though." I shrug and he laughs at that. "But it wasn't about that Alex. It was just about me thinking that you shouldn't be lonely if you're ready to move on. It wasn't completely about sex." I just thought he should know that. But it's seriously been a year and two months for him? Geez. Wait… "A year and two months?! I thought…I thought your wife only passed a little bit ago. How the hell has it been that long?!"

He has a smirk on his face but I don't think he necessarily finds anything funny. "Jen's only been dead for seven months. But when she started her treatments and stuff…the radiation and the medicines just made her real sick so we stopped. It didn't bother me though. I just wanted her to get better. She was too weak for sex most of the time and some of the medications she was on made her libido go away so we just had no sexual relationship anymore. Wasn't that big of a deal…just wanted my wife to feel better." He rests his head back against the headrest. "Seeing her as sick as she was didn't really ever put me in the mood for it anyway."

"I can understand that." I cover my mouth and softly clear my throat. Lyla softly stirs against my chest and makes a noise so I look down at her to make sure she's okay and still asleep. While I'm looking down at Lyla, Alex turns in his seat a little bit and grabs onto my foot. I'm not ticklish on my feet so he's not tickling me but it is weird that he's touching my foot. Granted, have socks on because I specifically thought to wear them. I wore socks and flip-flop sandals, only because I thought my feet would get cold on the plane. I plan to take them off when we get to the hotel though. Still, Alex starts rubbing my foot. "What the hell are you doing?" I raise an eyebrow at him.

"You have small feet…how big are they?" He lifts my foot up and stares at it like a weirdo. "What size do you wear?"

"Seven and a half." I try pulling my foot away from him but he starts rubbing the middle of it like he's giving me a massage so I let it go. I think a foot massage is a step up from holding hands…but I don't want to make anything awkward so if he wants to rub my feet, so be it. I won't judge him. I want to run my fingers through his hair so he can think that I'm weird for that, just like I think he's weird for touching my feet. I shake my head to clear my thoughts and return back to the conversation we were having. "So…seven months? When did she pass?"

He starts rubbing the heel of my foot. "November 25th…one month before Christmas, two days before her birthday." He says that so softly but hurt filled in his voice but I can't help but gasp. That's so strange. That can't be. He's messing with me, isn't he? He has to be messing with me. He has to be screwing me with me. If he is, it's not funny. He glances my way and sees that my face is all twisted. My own jaw dropped. "What? What's wrong?"

"…Nothing." I fix my face and shake my head. "November 25th…that's just…" I keep shaking my head. "That's just two days after Mark's birthday…and the day he died…"

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Do you have the directions, Jo?" I turn towards her and wait for her to answer me before I finish loading the rental car with our luggage. I rented a white Jeep Grand Cherokee for seven days, just to make sure we get back and forth to where we need to go while we're here. Sure taking the shuttle bus is cheaper than renting a car, but taking the bus is also way more inconvenient. I already spent an ungodly amount of money on this trip, what's an extra $137 for a rental car? Jo's standing next to the passenger's seat, messing around with my phone. I gave her the address to the hotel and told her to go on my navigation and pull up the directions on how to get there and she's been struggling with it. I think I might've chipped away at some of the guards Jo has up today on the plane. When she told me that her husband and Jenna died on the same day, I saw a totally different side of Jo. She was quiet at first but eventually, she pulled herself together. She started talking to me about what time the parks close, so in typical Jo fashion, she did deflect the entire subject but I could tell that she was still shaken up about finding out that my wife and her husband died on the same day. She let a tear fall in front of me. It was just one tear, that's all. But she cried in front of me which is something I doubt Jo will ever do again. I think I chipped away at one wall she has up. That's progress. "Do you need help?" She shakes her head. I guess it is a little weird that our spouses died on the same day but whatever. It's just coincidental. If I think about it too much and try to get Jo to believe that that it's _not_ coincidental, she might flip out on me and not talk to me for another eight days. So I'm just going to play along with her in thinking that it's a coincidence, if that's truly what she's thinking. It's clearly not a coincidence though. What are the odds that they die on the same day? And November 25th just so happens to be two days before Jenna's birthday and two days after Mark's birthday? And Jo just so happened to wind up in Florida, right? She just so happened to come to Millerton? I don't really know what any of this could possibly mean, but I do know that it's not a coincidence. It just can't be.

"Here, I got them." She holds my phone out to me as if I can take it right now. When she realizes that I'm still busy with cramming our luggage into the back of the car, she stops trying to hand me the phone. "It says that it's only 10 minutes away from where we're at right now." She sticks my phone in her back pocket and walks around to the trunk so she can help me. Lyla's standing on the sidewalk like I told her to. I don't want her to stand out here in the loading space with us when there are cars darting in and out of here. "So the park must be like…15 minutes away or something." She hoists one of her bags up and shoves it into the trunk. I bend down to put the last bag in the trunk and when I do, her butt is in my face since she's bending forward to make all the bags fit properly in the trunk. I hate to admit it, but I do stare for a second. She's wearing a pair of dark blue jean shorts and when she leans forward, they open up at the bottom around the leg holes, so from where I'm bent down at, I can see up her shorts a little bit. Her underwear are black and they look like they're made of lace. I stop looking and pick up the bag. "Is that the last one?" Just after I stop staring at her, she turns around to help me with the last bag.

"Yeah, that's the last one." I hand her the last bag and help her shove it in the trunk. I haven't really been able to take her seriously since she suggested that I start dating back on the plane. I guess maybe she has a point. There is a part of me—a very small part—that is ready to let go of Jenna and move on. It's only been seven months but I think that I'm ready to see what other options I have, especially since Jenna wanted me to find someone else. So maybe when we get back to Millerton, I'll start dating. There's this one girl I work with named Stacy. I'm not usually into blondes, but Stacy has a headful of bouncy blonde hair and blue eyes and she's kind of pretty. She's been trying to get me to go out with her for a while. Maybe when I get back in town, I'll ask her if she wants to go out for a drink or something. If Jo thinks I'm ready to date, maybe I am ready. Jo gives good advice most of the time. I shut the trunk and Jo walks the five feet over to the sidewalk to get Lyla.

Lyla still has no idea where we're going and she's pretty cranky right now because she wasn't ready to wake up from her nap when the plane landed. I have good reason to believe that her crankiness is about to go away though. "Daddy…" Lyla walks over to me without holding Jo's hand and knocks on my leg. I look down at her. "I hungry…can we go eat eat or you has to go to work wight now?" She looks so grouchy. Her eyebrows are furrowed and her hands are on her hips. I think her grumpiness stems from the fact that she had to wake up and from the fact that she still thinks I'm getting ready to drop her and Jo off at the hotel and leave her to go to work.

"Daddy doesn't have to work, Ly." I bend down and pick her up. She won't even hug me, that's how mad at me she is. She's stiff as a board and I'm holding her by her sides. She wrinkles her brows at me. "Nope. We're not here for me to go to work. I fibbed to you. We're here for something else."

"What we here for?" She tilts her head and loosens her body up. "Why you fib daddy? You not a'post to fib. That's bad."

"I know I'm not supposed to fib, baby girl. But you'll see why we're here in a little while." I kiss her on the cheek and open up the passenger's side door to put her in the car. I feel slightly irresponsible by putting her in the car without a car seat but I didn't bring one. I didn't think we would be driving until we were already a mile off the ground and flying here. But Jo offered to sit in the front seat and hold her. She thinks that Lyla would be able to see better if we keep her in the front seat and she's right. Any other time we have to get in the car, Lyla will be in the backseat with a seatbelt on. I hand her to Jo, who's already sitting in the car.

 **X X X**

"Why we here if you don't has to work, dada? I wanna go home…" She's still really tired so she's a little whiny right now but Jo has the window down and she's holding Lyla up so she can see. According to my navigator, we're going to completely pass the park on our way to the hotel, so Lyla will be able to see Cinderella's castle and when she sees it, then she'll get the picture. The wind is blowing her hair all over the place as I'm driving down a long road and that's bothering her in addition to her already being cranky. Jo smooths her hair back and rubs her arms to try and keep her calm. "I wanna go home…I no wanna be here…If you don't has to work dada, we go home…"

"You don't wanna go home, Lyla." Jo keeps rubbing her arms. "Trust me, you don't wanna go home. Wait until you see where we're going. You're gonna love it. But we can't go if you're all cranky. The people we're going to go visit…they won't like a cranky Lyla. So you have to be happy. Can you be happy?" Lyla rubs her eyes and shakes her head. She's really not in a good mood. "Why can't you be happy?" She just shakes her head again. Jo gasps. "Wait…you know who's really happy? Huh? Guess who's really happy?!" Lyla turns her head and looks at her. "Happy's really happy, isn't he? Like on your shirt." Jo points to the dwarf named Happy on Lyla's Cinderella shirt. "He's happy, right?" Lyla nods slowly. "And he wants to see you happy…so you gotta be happy…otherwise, he won't want to see you if you're not."

"I no wanna see him." She rests her head against Jo and whines. "I go home."

"You don't wanna see happy?!" Jo gasps again. "Well…do you wanna see Snow White?" Lyla shakes her head. "Do you wanna go to sleep?" Lyla nods. "….Well okay then. We can always go to the hotel and sleep…" I nudge Jo with my elbow to let her know that we're close enough to see the castle now. On the road in front of us is a big, welcoming arch. The road is long and freshly paved black with white lines dashing down the middle. On both sides of the road are little grass clearings with palm trees in the grass and dead ahead is the arch. The arch is held up with red bricked pillars with golden balls at the top of each pillar. The banner of the arch is bright yellow with red words streaking across it. The red words say, "WALT DISNEY WORLD". On top of the banner are little flags that are orange, blue and purple. In the middle of the flags is a cutout silhouette of Cinderella's castle resting on a bed of clouds and just below the red letters is another smaller blue banner with white words on it. The white words say, "Where Dreams Come True." Next to one of the pillars holding the arch up is a life-size cutout of Minnie Mouse and her hand is positioned so that she's introducing the banner. On the other side, Mickey Mouse is standing and his hand is introducing the banner too. "We can go to the hotel and sleep…is that what you want, Lyla?" Jo asks her again and she's moving so that when she shows her, Lyla will be able to see the banner perfectly. Lyla nods her head once more. "…Okay then. Looks like we're going to the hotel to sleep." Jo cracks a smile. "Or we can go right there if you want." Jo taps Lyla on her arm and points out the window at the banner. Lyla takes her hands away from her eyes and follows Jo's finger. "Do you wanna go right there? Do you know what that says?" Lyla's staring at the banner and I can tell she wants to smile…but she doesn't. I think she thinks that this isn't real just yet. "Who's that?" Jo points to the Mickey Mouse statue standing next to the pillar. "Who is that, Lyla?"

"…Mickey!" Lyla climbs across Jo's lap and sticks her head out the window. "Daddy, look! Look!"

"I see him baby girl…" I drive right through the arch and look at Jo. I still don't think she has the right idea just yet. Jo motions for me to keep going, telling me that she'll take care of introducing the big surprise to Lyla. "Say bye bye to Mickey…we're not going to go see him…not yet."

"Bye Mickey!" She waves at the statue that is long gone by now. After driving through the arch, we're just on more empty road. It sucks that she can't read. She didn't even know that the arch just basically told her where we're going. "Dada, why Mickey stand there? Him gonna get rained on."

"That's not the real Mickey Mouse, honey." Jo takes care of that question for me. "Where does the real Mickey Mouse live?"

"…At Dinney Werld." She tells Jo. "Mumma was gonna take me there, Doedoe…her said…her said…" She's looking at Jo so she can't see that the closer we get to the park, the clearer Cinderella's castle is getting. It's still pretty far away from us but you can clearly see it. It's small but it's there.

I nudge Jo because I have to make this next right turn to get to our hotel so if she doesn't show Lyla the castle right now, she won't see it. She nods at me. "Lyla, do you see that?" Jo points out the window and helps Lyla sit up so she can stick her head out the window. "Do you see that right here? Right there?" Lyla's craning her neck around. "Right there, sweetie… you see that?" Lyla gasps and nods. "What is that? Is that a castle?" She nods her head. "Who lives in a castle that looks like that?"

"…Cinnawella do." She's staring at the castle.

"You wanna go see her?" Jo nudges her. "You wanna go see Cinderella?"

"Yes." Lyla's so mesmerized by the castle that she can't even blink.

"Guess what? We're gonna go see her. We're gonna go see Cinderella in her castle and we're gonna see Mickey and Minnie…we're at Mickey's house, Lyla. And where does Mickey live?"

"…Daddy?" She looks over at me and I glance at her long enough to see her reaction. "We in Dinney Werld?"

"Yeah baby…we're in Disney World." I make the turn to take us to the hotel and since the road is a straight shot again, I look over at her face. She pokes her lip out, her face cracks up and she closes her eyes and puts her hands over them. I think she's crying. I reach over and move her hands away from her face and yeah, she's bawling. "Oh, Lyla, don't…"

"I go see Cinnawella…" She's crying so hard. "Fank you daddy….fank you…" She coughs from crying so hard and whines.

Well, we're here. We're at Disney for a week. A week with just me, Jo and Lyla. I wasn't expecting her to cry tears of joy over being here. I was expecting her to be happy but I wasn't expecting her to cry. I'll take that reaction though.


	24. Go Away

**A/N:** Here's a nice, _lengthy_ , detailed, feelings-filled chapter for you guys.

* * *

We've only been in the park for a lousy 45 minutes and I already don't know what I would do without Jo. Now that she's actually here with me, I can't imagine bringing Lyla here on my own. I'd be way in over my head. So far, we've only been on one ride and that's because we walked past it on our way to the nearest fast restaurant. Since we have all day to explore this entire park, I do plan on letting Lyla experience and ride everything here, but I wanted her to get something to eat before we started riding because she only had a banana for breakfast this morning and I know that she has to be hungry. I asked her if she was hungry and she said she wasn't, but I know that she only said that because she'd rather be off riding rides and meeting characters than sitting in The Cheshire Café eating something. As soon as we walked into the park, she burst into tears again and asked me to pick her up so she could hug me. When I put her down, she was way past the crying stage and all the way into the excitement stage. She tried to run off without me but Jo grabbed her hand and made her settle down. For the first ten minutes, we were just walking through Main Street USA, looking around and making ourselves familiar with the fact that we're actually here. The first non-sit down restaurant we found is The Cheshire Café and I told Jo to take her there, since she had her hand. But Lyla had other ideas. We're right by a section of The Magic Kingdom called Fantasyland and Lyla saw a ride and she went crazy over it. So of course, I gave in and Jo and I took her on the Dumbo ride before we brought her here to eat.

"Were you expecting her to cry?" Jo leans against the pink and white checkered counter and rests her arms on a blue and white polka-dotted mushroom. The Cheshire Café is designed to look like a cottage and on top of the building is a sign that has the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland on it. I didn't really care where we took Lyla to eat, as long as she ate. I didn't want us to sit down in a restaurant where people serve us, I just wanted something quick and easy. But we could've eaten any kind of food, I didn't care. Luckily for us though, the food kiosk we stopped at just so happens to serve breakfast food. Good, because I wouldn't feel right feeding Lyla a slice of pizza or something like that at 10:30 in the morning. It's still breakfast time for her. "I was a little shocked to see her cry, I won't lie. Were you?"

"I couldn't believe she cried." I crack a smile and move up in line so that I'm standing right next to Jo. I don't know why I don't just start to accept amazingness from Jo. I should just start to expect everything she does to be amazing because literally, she never ceases to amaze me. When we got on the Dumbo ride, Lyla wanted to sit in the front part of the cart with Jo so I sat in the back of their cart and Lyla had a blast with her. The ride was only one of those little kid rides that lifts up in the air and spins around in a circle, but you would've thought it was a serious rollercoaster with how much fun Lyla had in the front cart with Jo. I don't know what in the hell Jo did to make it so fun for her but all I know is that I wouldn't have been able to make Lyla laugh like that if I had rode in the cart with her. "I knew she was going to be happy but I didn't think she was going to cry." I look over at Lyla and make sure she's still doing okay. She's standing about ten feet away from us and she's petting a little white cat that's supposed to be Alice's cat from Alice in Wonderland. The cat is fat and content to sit on a mushroom like the one Jo's leaning against. "This is a pretty nice place, yeah?"

"It's gorgeous." She agrees with me and since the person that was standing in front of us in line got his food, she moves up and digs in her back pocket. I know if I offer to pay for her food, she'll refuse to let me and it might even escalate into an argument, so I'll just let her pay for her own food here. I'll cover her dinner when we decide to eat it. "It's a beautiful park. I'm feeling like a little kid again." She giggles and walks up to the register. The lady that's working in the little cottage booth is wearing a blue uniform with a pair of Mickey Mouse ears. "May I have…a small bowl of strawberry oatmeal with a side of pineapples? And I'll have a raspberry lemonade slush."

"$10.50." The worker takes Jo's eleven dollars with a smile on her face. Everyone here is so happy and smiley. Even the park sweepers are happy and pleasant. She hands Jo her change back and I can tell by the look on Jo's face that she wasn't expecting it to be that expensive for three things. I could've told her that though. It's $5.00 for a bottle of water, even if you buy it from the vending machines. The worker disappears into the back of the cottage to make Jo's food.

"Remind me next time to forgo the food and only get the damn drink." She shoves her change in her back pocket and turns around to face me. "I only brought $150 from my tip money. I thought that would be enough for me to eat and get souvenirs but I might have to reconsider." As she leans against the kiosk counter, her light pink tank top rises up just a little bit and exposes her lower stomach. Her tank top is a light pink color with navy blue stripes and the Abercrombie moose on her left breast. Her shorts are dark blue jeans and they're so tight it's a wonder she can breathe, but she seems comfortable in them. Her sandals are navy blue like the stripes on her shirt. I go to look away from her lower stomach, but a light pink scar catches my eye. It's very small and it's shaped like a lightning bolt almost. It's hardly noticeable but I tend to notice everything about Jo anymore. Like the fact that she has eleven brown beauty marks on her left arm, starting on her shoulder blade and scattering down to her wrist. And she only has six on her right. "Thank you." She's very polite as she takes her tray of food from the worker.

I snap out of looking at her and walk to the worker myself. I glance up at the menu to see what they've got. It says they offer assorted cereals with fresh milk, fresh fruit, a variety of oatmeal, assorted muffins, tea, cocoa, raspberry lemonade slushes and Minute Maid drinks. "What kind of cereals do you have?" I doubt they have any of Lyla's favorite cereals but she'll settle for a bowl of Cheerios if they have Cheerios.

"We have Frosted Mini Wheats, Fruit Loops, Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Cinnamon Toast Crunch…" The worker steps aside and points to a small case that displays the different cereals that they offer.

"Can I have a bowl of Cheerios with milk, a small cup of orange juice, a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats, a large cup of Lemonade and two apples?" I reach in my pocket to grab my wallet out of it.

"$17.34, sir." She takes my twenty dollar bill again with a smile. I actually don't think that twenty bucks for food is that bad considering how expensive the rest of this park's food is. I'd pay twenty bucks for food any day. She goes back to make my food too and when I look over to where Jo was standing, she's gone now. I turn my head over towards the patio of tables next to the kiosk and see that she's sitting down with Lyla on her lap. Lyla's sucking on Jo's straw and eyeing her pineapples. See, I knew she was hungry. She was just too excited to tell me that she was hungry. The tables look like little patio tables. They have white chairs with pink, purple and light green cushions and a white table with a colorful flower mosaic in the center. Each table has a colorful umbrella to offer shade. Jo's right; this is a really nice park. "Here you are, sir." The worker presents me with my tray of food.

"Thank you, ma'am." I toss a couple straws from the dispenser on my tray, a couple packets of sugar and two spoons. I pick up the tray and make my way over to the table that Jo and Lyla are sitting at. Jo's eating her oatmeal while Lyla's on her lap looking around. "Here Ly, come sit down next to me." I put my tray down on the table and pull out the chair next to where I'm going to sit down. Jo helps her off her lap and Lyla walks over and climbs up in the chair next to me. "Here, eat." I start dumping sugar on her Cheerios and I hand her a spoon when I'm done. "Are you happy we're at Disney World, Ly?" I spoon some of my own cereal into my mouth.

"Yes!" She takes a bite of cereal and chews it with her mouth closed, just like I'm always telling her to do. "Daddy…" She starts talking again before she even swallows. "I has a lot to do. I has to go see lots of people. I busy." Jo laughs softly at her saying that she's busy. "Is Ewsa home? Can we go see her? Please daddy?" I motion at Jo with my head. Jo nods at me and leans over to the empty fourth chair that I put our drawstring bag on. She opens the bag and pulls out a map that includes the schedules for all the character experiences. "Daddy, I happy my Doedoe comed with us."

"I'm happy your Jojo came with us too." With a mouthful of cereal, I pick up Lyla's apple and peel the sticker off of it so she can eat it. Jo nods her head and holds up one finger and then two, which means that Elsa will be at her exhibit until 12:00. In order to keep the magic alive for Lyla, Jo and I seem to have developed our own little language. Neither one of us want to say something that'll ruin any of the fun for Lyla so we've been communicating in mysterious ways when Lyla's around. "We'll go visit Elsa when you're done eating." I easily finish off the last bit of my cereal and move on to eat my apple. Lyla's still working on her cereal and Jo's done with her oatmeal and now working on her pineapples. "Is Jojo happy she came with us?" I just try to strike up conversation with her.

Her lips turn up into a smile through her chewing and she nods her head. I watch her throat bob as she swallows and licks her lips. "Yes…" She nods again and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "Thank you for inviting me." She picks up her drink and takes a sip of it.

Lyla starts to eat her apple but once she sees Jo taking a drink, she turns her attention to the drink instead of the apple. "Have some? I have some, Doedoe?" She stands on her knees and leans towards Jo. "Have a sip?"

"Mhm." Jo nods her head and hands her drink to Lyla.

"Lyla, drink your own. Leave Jo's alone." I toss my apple core into the bowl of milk and lean across the table to hand Lyla her own drink.

"It's fine, Alex. She likes the fact that it's a slushy, I guess." Jo holds her own straw to Lyla's face and Lyla takes a long sip. "What'd you get her? Orange Juice?" I nod. "Give it here. I'll drink it." I hand her the orange juice and sure enough, she drinks it. "We should probably get going if we're going to go see Princess Elsa, shouldn't we?"

"I guess we should."

 **X X X**

"Holy cow's alive…" Jo mumbles under her breath specifically for me and me only to hear her. She took the words right out of my mouth. "We're never going to get her out of this place." She's right about that. I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating. This park is pretty freaking amazing. For a moment when we left The Cheshire Café, we got a little lost. According to the map, in order to get to the place where Princess Elsa was going to be, we had to go somewhere called Princess Fairytale Hall. Admittedly so, Jo and I got lost for a second but we made it to the place and "Holy cow's alive" is a bit of an understatement. This place is ridiculous. It's built to look like a scaled down version of a castle. The banner going across the top of the building is purple and it says, "PRINCESS FAIRYTALE HALL" across it in golden letters. The pillars that hold the place up are gold, the crown on top of the building is gold…it looks like a little girl's dream house, to say the least. They had to have spent trillions on this place. "The Fast-Pass line is this way." Jo points to a small opening amongst the hundreds of people that are already standing in line. There's a gold sign standing in front of the queue line that says the wait right now is 30 minutes. "We probably should've done this last. She's going to want to spend all her time in here."

"…I'm not even a chick and I want to spend all my time in here." With Lyla's hand in mine, I start walking her through the Fast-Pass queue line and she's just as amazed with the place as me and Jo are. Even the queue line is nice, and that's saying something. Me, Jo and Lyla all walk through a set of doors that look like a castle. The only way for us to know that this actually is a queue line is the fact that there are velvet ropes to guide us and show us where to walk. The inside of this place is even nicer than the outside. It looks like a legit castle. It's dim in here and all the walls are made of light and dark brown stones. The ceiling lights are gold and they look like princess crowns with purple gems in the sides so that some of the lighting comes out as purple. "This makes no sense." We finally make it to the end of the line, where there are about ten other people ahead of us with their Fast-Passes.

"You would think real princesses live here." Jo whispers to me, which makes me laugh. Lyla is looking around like she's overwhelmed but the look on her face is of pure amazement. She thinks she's in a legit princess castle and nobody can tell her otherwise. "Come here, Lyla…come here." Jo holds her arms out for her and reluctantly, Lyla tears her eyes away from looking all around and allows Jo to pick her up. "Look…" She points to a golden, glass display cabinet. It's a little far away for us to see from our place in line so since there's nobody else behind us in line, Jo steps out and walks her over to it. "That's Cinderella's glass slipper…isn't that cool?" I hear Lyla gasp all the way over where I'm standing. "You wanna take a picture next to it?" Lyla nods and Jo puts her down. She grabs her phone from her back pocket and angles herself to take Lyla's picture standing next to the shoe.

"Hey Jo…come on." I hate to ruin their moment but the line's moving and I don't want them to get left behind. Jo nods slightly and picks Lyla back up. They rejoin me in line. "Lemme see the picture you took?" She takes her phone back out and shows it to me. Lyla's cheesing so hard that her eyes are nearly closed but she looks so happy. "Send me that." I can't believe how they have this place set up. Every last detail is spot on and that's just amazing to me. Even in the display case, they have the damn slipper sitting on top of a purple and gold pillow. When the line moves, we have to turn another corner that leads us into a totally different hallway. Jesus, this place is downright ridiculous. Now, we're standing on a red velvet carpet that leads down a long hallway and eventually into the room where the princess is. On each side of the hallway are hand-painted portraits of all the different princesses. They really know how to make a little girl believe that this is where princesses live. There's a big chandelier right in the middle of the ceiling. "Hey Ly, tell me who these girls are." I pick her up, put her on my hip and point to the pictures of the princesses on the wall. The pictures are literally hand-painted and framed in expensive looking frames. In between each picture are candleholders with lit candles in them. "Who are they?"

"That's…Seepin' Booty." She points to a blonde haired girl wearing a pink dress. Jo starts laughing for the same reason I laugh. There's nothing like a Seeping Booty, I guess. "Um…there's Tiana." She points to a dark-skinned girl wearing a green dress. "And Wapunza." She shows me a girl with super long, blonde hair in a pink dress. "Dazmine." The points out the light-skinned girl with long, dark black hair in a blue pair of pants and a belly shirt. "Muwan." I already know the Chinese looking one is Mulan but she shows me anyway. "Sooo White." She's just rattling them off. "Ewsa…Anna." I tried to keep up but I seriously can't. "Aweil…Cinnawella…and Mewida."

"Wow…that's a lot of princesses. How are we going to find enough time to meet them all?" I keep her in my arms instead of putting her back down on the ground. It's not a big deal to carry her. Besides, this place is so amazing that I wouldn't be surprised if she wandered away and I never saw her again. "Because you know we're going to meet them all, right? Some of them, we have to go to their house and see them but we're going to meet them all…plus Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Donald Duck."

"And Pooto and Daisy." She corrects me after I miss some. I crack a smile. I really should've brushed up on my Disney skills before bringing her here. Between her and Jo, I'm getting my ass kicked in Disney Trivia. "Daddy, you has a favorite?" She touches my hair and pets me like I'm a puppy. "You has a favorite person?"

"I like Goofy." The line moves up and so do we. "I think Goofy's really funny so I like him." I press my lips to her cheek. I'm so glad I got the opportunity to bring her here and I'm super glad that she seems happy to be here. Of course it's not the same as it would've been if both Jenna and I had brought her here but having Jo here in place of Jenna is a pretty nice alternative. She's doing basically everything Jenna would've done and that's exactly why I needed her to come along. I needed someone to tolerate all this princess talk with Lyla. "Is Elsa your favorite?" She nods her head, still poking my hair and stuff. "What's Jojo's favorite? Do you know?" Lyla shrugs her shoulders. "Well let's ask her." I turn around and face Jo, who's looking at the painted pictures of the princesses. "Jojo."

She turns her head and faces the both of us. Still messing with my hair and my head, Lyla takes the initiative to talk to her. "You has a favorite person, Doedoe? You like someone a lot?"

"Um…" Jo leans against the velvet ropes. "I like Chip and Dale and then I like Ariel." She looks down at the cobblestone floor that the velvet rug is sitting on. "Chip and Dale are pretty cute."

"I thought you liked Snow White." I raise my eyebrow. Jo totally seems like a Snow White kind of girl. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I swear she told Lyla that she loved her Snow White shirt. "I could've swore you said Snow White was your favorite."

"When did I say that?" She tilts her head. "I can't stand Snow White. Snow White was a whoooo..." She catches herself before she can get the word out, being mindful that not only is Lyla around but there are about eight other kids in this room, all of whom probably idolize poor Snow White. "Snow White was a…a…a trollop." I start laughing so hard at her choice of words. "What? I'm so serious. She lived in one house with seven men like…ew. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what she was doing."

"Jo, that's a KID'S movie. She wasn't…going to bed with the dwarves." I shake my head at her.

"You can't sit here and tell me that dirty little smeeze lived in that house and did nothing. They should've thought that storyline through better because I mean…that whole thing just screams, 'Juila Roberts in Pretty Woman' to me. They could've at least made a few of the dwarves women…that would've made it easier to believe." She's really presenting some convincing facts here. It's as if she's had this argument before.

"Can only imagine what you think of The Little Mermaid then. She fell in love with her prince and she didn't even know him. Didn't she give up her voice for someone she didn't even know?" The line moves up once more so I move with it. I guess I'm glad that Lyla doesn't seem to be paying attention to our conversation as much as she's paying attention to the pictures and the scenery of this castle but even if she did decide to tune in and listen, I think Jo and I are doing a good job with keeping the conversation PG although we're not talking about PG things.

"All the Disney princesses are pretty horrible if you ask me. They're all suckers for falling in love after barely even knowing the guy. Be glad your daughter's favorite is Elsa, because Elsa's the only one that's not a total dumb ass." She's smirking but she rolls her eyes at me nonetheless. "Still…none of their stories are as bad as Snow White getting gang-banged by the dwarves." I cover my hand over my mouth when she says that. "…I am so sorry, I have no idea where that came from." She doesn't even sound sorry. She sounds more like "oops, my bad" than sorry. I can't stop laughing. Jo's funny. She's truly hilarious.

"Shut up, Jo. Just stop talking." I shake my head at her. In the past, it's always been a huge turn on if a woman can make me laugh. Jo not only makes me laugh, but she makes me crack up and my sides hurt from laughing so hard. Every time I'm with her or around her, she makes me laugh. The best part is that she doesn't even try to be funny, it just comes natural to her. She's the only woman I know that would make a comment about a children's character being "gang-banged". She's something else. She's still smirking from the conversation we just had but she took my advice and shut up. She faces forward again and since she's looking straight, I take a moment to look at her. Her side profile…I think I can stop denying it now. Yeah, Jo's a very attractive female. I don't know if _I'm_ attracted to her per say, but she's really pretty. Not only does she have a pretty face but she has a beautiful personality too…once you look past the emotionally-stunted part. Come to think of it, maybe there is a little piece of me that's attracted to Jo.

I think I'm attracted to her personality more than her looks. Don't get me wrong, she is a pretty woman, but I'm more drawn to her personality than her looks. She's very gentle, mild-mannered, and good with kids and she's funny. She seems pretty level-headed and even-tempered. Hell, I might even go as far as saying she's sweet. I've never even heard her so much as raise her voice, even when she's been angry with me. She's kind of callous though. She's very hardened but she's shown me that she can be soft. She's a big softie when it comes to Lyla. And she's just naturally funny. Her personality is amazing and the fact that she's pretty is just an added bonus, I think. I tilt my head to get a better look at her. She has eyelashes that are so long and thick that they look like bristles of a mascara brush. Her nose suits her face so perfectly that I don't think I've ever seen someone's fact that looks so well-thought out. Her lips are thick, really plump and very, very pink. Okay yeah, Jo's attractive and I'm attracted to her. But the attraction…it's not strong enough for me to act on it. I just think she's pretty and I think she could make any man—not necessarily me—happy someday.

"Daddy, puhmme down." Lyla taps me on my cheek and breaks the concentration I had on Jo. Good thing too, because I didn't need to be concentrating on Jo as hard as I just was. I go ahead and put Lyla down on the ground but I make sure to keep my hand inside hers. We're getting very close to being let in the room where the princess is at so I'm sure that's why she wanted to be let down. "Come on, Doedoe…we go meet Ewsa." Lyla grabs Jo's hand and starts pulling her.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I already feel like we've seen more than a billion things for as long as we've been here but we still have so much more to get through…and it's only one small part of the entire park. I must say that I'm really, truly, eternally grateful that Alex invited me here. If he would've never invited me (or paid for me) I would've never been able to see a place like this in my life. Even if I did have a job as a teacher, there's no way in hell I'd ever be able to afford to come here. This place truly is magical. It's bringing me back to my childhood days of sitting on my mom's lap and watching episodes of Mickey Mouse Adventures until I fell asleep. I can only imagine how much fun this must be for Lyla, to walk around and meet all her favorite princesses and stuff. I imagine that if I were a little girl again, I would be too excited to contain myself and I would probably jump at the chance to go meet Cinderella and Ariel and Belle. It's a totally different feeling, being here. It feels like I have no worries besides what ride we're going to hit next and who we're going to stand in line for Lyla to meet. It's just so…magical, that's the only way I can describe it. Secretly, I'm so glad we're here for a week. I don't know how I'm going to be able to go back and work at the diner after having this incredible, magical week.

So far, we've met Elsa and her sister Anna and we've rode the Dumbo ride. After we met Elsa and Anna before their exhibit closed, we had to make our way to Cinderella's Castle because Alex made reservations for Lyla to do some kind of activity with the Fairy Godmother. I don't know exactly what it is that we're getting ready to go do but I'm sure that it'll be something that'll make Lyla beyond happy. I think he made a wise decision to do The Magic Kingdom first. There's just a buttload of things to do here and it'd only make sense that we'd do it on the first day. "What time are the reservations for?" We're standing in line to be let into Cinderella's Castle and Lyla is resting her head on my leg. She's been hanging all over me all day. I don't mind it; I actually quite like it. But I'm not used to it. I stroke her cheek. She might be a little bit tired. She didn't get all her sleep out from her nap on the plane and she's been doing a whole lot of walking today. She should sleep really well tonight.

We haven't even scratched the surface of the park just yet, but I think it's safe to say that my favorite part so far was seeing Lyla meet Elsa and Anna. She literally ran into the room and gave Elsa the biggest hug ever. Elsa literally had to pick her up and hug her back because Lyla just threw herself on her. Anna had to sit there and endure Lyla's questions about Kristoff and Sven and Elsa endured questions about Olaf and she had the best time. I've never seen her open up to a stranger like that. I mean, I guess she didn't really think Elsa was a stranger. She doesn't really know that Elsa's not Elsa so she probably thinks she knows Elsa very well. The two of them were really nice to her though. They let me and Alex take a bunch of pictures and they were so sweet. Anna kept calling Lyla pretty. Both of them were referring to her as "Princess Lyla" and she was absolutely thrilled when Elsa told her that she was gorgeous. Lyla played with Elsa's braid and told her that she was gorgeous too. It was the sweetest thing I've ever seen and my favorite part so far. I don't know why, but every time they would comment on how pretty she is, I felt like I just wanted to say "I know". I felt like a proud mother or something like that. I'm such an idiot.

"12:30." Alex unscrews the cap off the bottle of iced tea he actually bought from the vending machine. It's $4.00. I'm thirsty too but I'd rather just be thirsty than pay $4.00 for a bottle of anything. I can wait until we eat lunch or dinner or whatever. He takes a long guzzle of his tea and hands it down to Lyla before he screws the top back on. Lyla pushes the bottle away and shakes her head. He offers it to me next. I raise my eyebrow and shake my head slowly. I'd love to have a drink of something…I'm thirsty as heck. But no thanks. I don't need to drink off of him. "What? You think I have cooties or something?" No, it's not that I don't trust him. I trust him enough to drink off of him. I drank of Lyla earlier for Christ's sake. But it's just…weird if I drink off of Alex. It's like I'm kissing him if I drink off of him and I don't know, that's just weird. I know he's clean and I know he doesn't have any incurable infectious diseases but I think drinking off each other is a whole different kind of friendship. That's a level I don't think I'm ready for. "Suit yourself. But I promise I don't have any kind of something you could catch from me."

I roll my eyes and sigh. What the hell? What do I have to lose at this point? Nothing. I stick my hand out for the bottle and he hands it to me. I take the cap back off and stick it to my lips. I'm practically kissing Alex. His spit is on my lips and whatever kind of backwash he deposited into the bottle is now in my mouth. I feel weird about that but damn, this tea is good. I was so thirsty. I guzzle the rest of it down and hand him the empty bottle since he's closest to the trashcan. "Thanks." I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. "What exactly is this reservation for?" I look down at Lyla just to make sure she's okay. Her arms are wrapped around my leg and her head is against my thigh and she's just patiently waiting.

"Some kind of princess thing. I don't know exactly but I think it's just a makeover type of thing." He shrugs. "She likes to play dress up so I just thought she'd like this." At long last, it's our turn to be let into the castle. This lady dressed like a maid with a white and black uniform and a feather duster in her hand holds her free hand out for Alex's ticket. He hands her a pink, yellow and purple slip of paper. I look at it to see if there's any indication of what this is. All it says is, "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique". I hold Lyla's hand and follow Alex.

"Go straight down the hallway and follow the signs. At the door, you'll meet the Fairy Godmother in training that'll be taking care of you today." The lady touches Lyla's arm with the feather duster, which makes Lyla crack a smile and finally let me go. I think she got her excited energy back. We go inside the castle and do as she says, following the signs. It goes without saying, how nice this place is. I don't even think I'm surprised at this point. I was taken aback by the Princess Fairytale Hall so I was expecting Cinderella's Castle to be magnificent as well and…well, it is. It looks like a real, live castle. Alex said that he could've paid to stay here. They rent out hotel rooms in the castle and he said he was going to pay to stay here but with Lyla and how shy she is, he didn't think that it was a good idea. Still holding Lyla's hand, we follow the signs that takes us to the Boutique. My jaw drops when I see the inside of it. It's a big, huge beauty salon, basically. The floor is white with gold tiles and black corners on the gold tiles. The ceiling is light brown and made of stone with a chandelier in the center. All around the room are mirrors and blue and pink chairs to sit in. There are about ten or so other little girls in here getting their makeovers. I wish my mom brought me here as a child. I would've loved this.

"Hello." Another lady meets us at the entrance to the salon room. She's wearing a blue vest and a purple skirt, her hair is done up in a high bun and she's wearing glasses that are clearly fake. "My name is Norma and I'm going to be your Fairy Godmother-In-Training today." She kneels down and gets eyelevel with Lyla. Lyla takes a step away from her and hides her face behind my leg. "You mind telling me your name?" Her tone is very, very friendly. She reaches out and touches Lyla's arm. "I like to address all my princesses by name."

I reach down and stroke Lyla's hair back. "Her name's Lyla." Alex says her name for her. "She's a little shy…but she's excited to be here."

"Well Princess Lyla…" She holds her hand out in hopes that Lyla will take it. "What do you say we go find a chair to sit in and begin your princess makeover?" Lyla squeezes my leg so I shake it just slightly to let her know that I'm not saving her from this. She needs to break herself of this shyness. "You know…I used to be really shy too. When I first came here and started out…I was scared about becoming a good Fairy Godmother. But with lots of practice, I got over it. I know what it's like to be scared." Lyla loosens up a bit. "What if I promise you that nothing will happen to you while you're here? Will that help?" She peeks out from behind my legs. "You wanna come with me?" Lyla nods and actually takes the woman's hand. "You two can come back and get her in about 45 minutes. We should be all done by then."

"Alright, thanks." Alex taps me on my shoulder to let me know that we have to sneak away. The two of us wait until Lyla's back is turned and she's preoccupied with actually being in the room to walk away. "I think we're gonna come back here for dinner later. I hear they have good food." We start walking back up the hallway the way we came and we both walk out the exit, opposite the entrance. "What do you wanna do for 45 minutes?" He asks me.

"I don't know." I shrug my shoulders. "…You wanna go get on that rollercoaster that Lyla was too small to get on?" I suddenly remember that the both of us love rollercoasters, as we established back at the boardwalk during the Fourth of July festival.

"Sure."

 **X X X**

"I dare you to put your hands up. I dare you." He turns towards me with a smirk on his face as the cart is chugging up a hill. He's acting like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is a huge rollercoaster. It's not big at all. The highest drop is like 60-feet or something like that so putting my hands up isn't a big deal at all. I do think it's a pretty nifty rollercoaster though. It's designed to look like a mine train and we're supposed to be going through an abandoned mountain on a railroad. It's pretty cool but it's definitely not something to dare me to put my hands up for. "Unless you're too chicken to do it, of course." He winks at me. I crack a reluctant smile and let go of the bar I was holding onto to put my hands up. I don't know why he makes me smile so much. It's like no matter what we're doing and no matter what he says to me, I have to smile. He just brings it out of me and for what reason I do not know.

"I'm not chicken, I'm just used to bigger rollercoasters than this." The cart rests at the top of the hill for about three seconds before it goes barreling down into a dark tunnel below. I keep my hands up though because I never chicken out of a dare.

"Bold! Bold move!" He screams at me while we're in the darkness of the tunnel. I laugh and bring my hands down since he can't see me anymore. When I rest my hands back on the bar in front of us though, my left hand touches his. I quickly move it away. Since we're in the darkness and we can't see, it's unexpected when we go down another hill. "Oh shit." He mumbles.

"Chicken shit." I nudge him with my elbow and just like that, we're out of the tunnel and back into the light of day. He was staring at me, I think. Because when we're back into the light, he has to turn his head very quickly. I think the ride is over because we seem to have slowed down, but we're not back at our dock just yet. "Why didn't you put your hands up?" I turn my head towards him. "You dared me to…why didn't you?"

"I don't do that risky stuff." He shakes his head and takes his hands off the bars since it's pretty clear that the ride is over. Lyla would've enjoyed that. It's a shame that she's not tall enough to ride. "I'm not a big risk taker. I just enjoy the thrill of the ride I guess." Our cart comes back to dock and slows to an official stop. "Come on…we should probably go get Lyla now." Even though we had Fast-Passes, it still took us about twenty or so minutes to get through the queue line, get through the rollercoaster queue and then get through the ride. And by the time we make it back to Cinderella's Castle, it'll probably be time for us to get Lyla. I follow Alex down the ramp to get off the ride. We're still only in Fantasyland. We still have Tomorrowland, Frontierland, Liberty Square and Adventureland to get through before we're officially done with The Magic Kingdom. "You want anything to drink, Jo?"

"No thanks, I'm fine." I walk next to him and just take in the scenery. Literally everything is Disney-themed here. The trashcans are shaped like Mickey Mouse ears, the hedges have been trimmed in the shape of Mickey Mouse ears…it's so nice here.

"I wanna go in here real quick." He motions towards a small little store. I nod and follow him into it. "I wanna see if they have any good t-shirts or something I can bring my boss… I told her I'd buy her something." We go inside the store and immediately, we're thrust into a world of delightful air conditioning. God, it feels good in here. Well I clearly can't afford anything in here so I'm just going to look around. If I find something under $10.00, I might buy it for my mom, since she's coming to visit sometime next week. I follow Alex back to a rack of t-shirts. I turn around and look at wall of knick-knacks. I pick up a snow globe to see how much it is. It's really pretty. It has Cinderella's Castle in the center of it and it has a purple base with "Where Dreams Come True" written across it in silver lettering. The snow in it isn't really snow at all, but flecks of purple, pink, blue and green glitter. On the side, there's a button and when I push the button, it starts lighting up and making tiny little firework noises. This is cool. I turn it over and look for a price on the bottom. It's $22.50. I think I'll get it anyway, for my mom. I keep the snow globe in my hand and go back to where Alex is. He's got a tiny grey t-shirt in his hand and he's still looking. I assume the tiny shirt is for Lyla. It has a pair of Minnie Mouse ears on the front and a Minnie Mouse tail hanging off the back. "Find something you want?"

"Mhm." I show him the snow globe I found. "I'm gonna go pay for it, okay? I'll be back." I take it up to the register and let the worker ring it up for me. I hand him a twenty dollar bill and since it's twenty bucks even, he bags it for me and hands it to me. "Thanks." I mumble and go back to Alex. He's got four shirts in his hands now and he's looking at the oh-so-famous Mickey Mouse ear collection. I always thought they only sold Mickey Mouse ears and Minnie Mouse ears but I was wrong. They have all kinds of ears. Alex picks up a pair with a tiara on it and pink sparkles all over it. He's already spent over a hundred bucks in here with the shirts and he's going for ears now? He picks up a hat that looks like the one Goofy wears. It has the Goofy ears hanging down and it has Goofy's name written across the top.

"Grab a pair." He points to the collection. "Which ones do you want?" I shake my head. I seriously don't need a pair of those. They're cute for sure, but I don't need them. "Jo, grab a pair. I'm not going to let you be the only one walking around without them. I'm gonna wear the Goofy hat, Lyla's gonna wear the tiara one and you're gonna look like the oddball. Grab a pair." I roll my eyes and point to the pair that I think is the cutest. It's simple but I don't want anything real big and gawky. "These?" He takes them off the shelf and I nod. It's a pair of Minnie Mouse ears but instead of a hat, it's just a headband and the bow in the middle is bright fluorescent pink and it lights up. "Come on…lemme get outta here before I break my pockets." He goes to the checkout and since I already paid for my snow globe, I just stand back.

While I wait for him, I turn around and just look at the different kinds of merchandise they have in here. They have really nice souvenirs but they're way too expensive. My mom better love me forever. I spent twenty freaking bucks on a damn snow globe. "We'll have a house party…" I mumble to myself, singing along to the song that's playing over the speaker in here to entertain myself since Alex is taking forever. "Turn your TV off break that boombox out…" I pick up little light up magic wand to see how much it is. $30.00. That's freaking ridiculous. That's robbery. "And the cops show up, try to shut us down…" I put the wand back down and sigh. "If you're gonna be a homebody…we're gonna have a house party." I sigh again. Why is Alex taking so damn long?"

"You know he's going on tour this summer?" He says as he approaches me while he's looking in his bag of souvenirs.

"Who?" I wrinkle my brow.

"Sam Hunt…House Party guy." He tears off the price tag and hands me my pair of ears. I'm glad he tore off the price tag because I would've felt guilty if I had to look at how much he spent on them. "He's going on tour in August, I believe. Supposed to be coming to Pensacola." We start walking out of the gift shop. "You get down with him?"

"…I love him." I admit because I do, I do love Sam Hunt. I think he's so sexy. "I don't really like country music much…probably because my mom shoved it down my throat growing up, but I do love Sam Hunt. He's so sexy and his voice…ugh." I grit my teeth. "I did know he was going on tour though. I didn't know he was coming to Pensacola though. I might have to ask some of the girls from work to come with me. I need someone to go with me. There's no way I'm missing him."

"So you don't want to go with your old pal Alex?" He tears the price tag off his Goofy hat as well and sticks it on his head. "I like the dude and I think he's coming with Florida Georgia Line…I like Florida Georgia Line too. But if you'd rather go with a couple of chicks from your job, suit yourself." I can't help but laugh at how stupid he looks with that hat on. I can't take him seriously with those ears dangling down the way they are. "Now you laugh at the idea of going to a concert with me?"

"It's not the concert." I shake my head, laughing hysterically. "You look like an idiot. You should see yourself." I hold my stomach and laugh even harder because he just moved his head and the ears flopped all over the place. "Oh, Alex." I pull myself together and wipe the little bit of tears that started to fall from laughing so hard. "But yeah…I'd go see Sam Hunt and Florida Georgia Line with you, if you want." I shrug my shoulders. "If you don't have anyone else to go with, I mean. You'll be dating by August…because you will have taken your old pal Jo's advice and asked someone out, right? So if you're not dating someone by then, yeah. We can go see Sam Hunt."

"I decided to ask this girl named Stacy out." He puts his hands in his pockets, keeps the hat on his head and starts walking back towards Cinderella's castle. "She works at the hospital with me. She's a single mom, got two kids of her own…" He shrugs. "She'd understand me."

"That's…good." For some reason, hearing that he plans to ask Stacy out makes me sick. I swallow my pride and ignore it though. I told him he should start dating and I meant that. I'm not sure if meant…Well I mean… "As long as she's nice, I guess." I shrug my own shoulders and walk with him. I'm tired of carrying my ears so I stick the headband on my head. Okay, this is me getting in touch with my feelings again. I think when I told Alex to start dating… I think maybe there was a piece of me that might've meant…I don't know…that he should date…maybe date me? I don't know. But I'm sick hearing out this Stacy girl. I think I might even be a little bit jealous. "Where you plan on taking her?" I don't want to know more details about this. I don't want to sit here and torture myself. But some part of me does want details. It's like I enjoy hearing things that could possibly ruin my mood.

"Haven't gotten that far yet. She's just the only one that doesn't act like an idiot when I come around her, so I guess asking her out is the best option. I don't want to go on a date with a girl that's going to spend more time drooling over me than talking to me." _Me? I wouldn't drool. I would talk to you. Alex, I would talk to you._ "Think I might ask her for a drink, maybe something to eat." He clears his throat. "Maybe we could go to the Lobster Hut. Lemme know when you're working. We could request you."

My breath catches in my throat for a second when he says that. "Sure." I plaster on a fake smile. After a few seconds, my fake smile isn't so fake anymore. It turns into a real one. I kind of just want to see him happy. If Stacy makes him happy then so be it. I guess he doesn't really have to date me. I mean, why would he? I still don't know what I want and I can't give Alex something if I don't know what I want. I don't know if I'm ready to move on from Mark and start dating again. How can I get jealous when I'm not sure if would even want to date him? I wouldn't mind dating Alex…I just don't think I'm ready to and I wouldn't dare hurt him. I wouldn't give him any part of me until I'm absolutely sure I can give him 100% without making it just a settle. I don't want to settle for Alex or for anyone. If I have feelings for him, I want those feelings to be genuine and not because I'm looking for someone to fill the void Mark left. Speaking of Mark…that's the first time ALL DAY I've thought about him.

As we get closer to getting back to Cinderella's Castle, off in the distance, I can see Goofy approaching the two of us. "Hey look…my long lost cousin." Alex cracks a joke and although it was funny, I can only muster up a little laugh. Goofy's coming straight for us, probably because Alex is wearing that stupid ass hat. So we stop walking so it's not like we're not avoiding him. "What's up?" Alex greets Goofy when he finally gets to us and Goofy touches his hat. I stand off to the side and just watch. I don't want any parts of that. Alex and Goofy shake hands, which I find cute so I hurry up and snap a picture of them with my phone. Goofy acts like he's sniffing Alex and then he taps Alex's shoulder. I tried so hard to stay out of it but of course, the doglike character comes over to me next.

"Hi Goofy." I hold my hand out for a handshake and instead of shaking my hand like he did Alex's, he brings my hand to his "mouth" and "kisses" it. "Thank you, you're very sweet." I pet his snout like he's an actual dog. He puts his hands over his cheeks as if he's blushing and gives me the "aw shucks" hand wave. I start to laugh. He grabs my hand again with his big white gloves and "kisses" my forehead. "Awww…do you at least want my name first?" He nods his head. "I'm Jo…" He gets down on one knee and looks up at me. "You want me to marry you?" This is officially the coolest thing that's ever happened to me. Goofy nods his head at me. "Sure, why not?!" I throw my hands up. He stands up and jumps up and down for a moment before looking at Alex and wrapping his arm around me. Alex puts his hands up like he's surrendering and that's when I start laughing. I wonder who the guy in the Goofy costume is and why he felt the need to propose to me. Goofy gives me one more kiss on my forehead and waves at me and Alex. "Bye Goofy." We wave back and continue on our way to Cinderella's Castle to get Lyla. "…So I'm off the market. This is a married woman you're talking to."

"Well don't mind me." Alex shakes his head. "Lyla's gonna be so jealous."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

Today was…eventful, to say the least. Lyla had a very nice time in The Magic Kingdom. She met everyone, Cinderella, Elsa, Anna, Belle, Ariel…you name it, she met it. We rode everything too, except for the teacup ride. It was down for maintenance so we didn't get a chance to ride it but I promised Lyla that we would come back and ride it some other time before we leave. She had the most fun with her princess makeover though. When Jo and I went back to get her, she was wearing a yellow dress like Belle from Beauty and the Beast and her hair was done up in a real pretty bun. She had a tiara on top of her head, a pink sash across her chest and little yellow shoes. I was a little uncomfortable with the fact that they put actual makeup on her face but Jo talked me down. She told me that it was only a one-time thing, she had fun and it was only a little makeup. Lyla did love it though. She thought she was the biggest princess ever. We had dinner with the princesses in Cinderella's Castle and Princess Jasmine came over to sit by Lyla for a little while and I guess Princess Elsa and her sister Anna enjoyed meeting Lyla so much that they came over to sit by her for a little bit too. Lyla asked them if they wanted to build a snowman (I have no idea why when there's literally no snow on the ground) and next thing I know, the two princesses are handing my daughter a stuffed snowman she named Olaf. It was free so I let her keep it.

We got back to the hotel about two hours ago and after Jo and I literally beat the dress off of Lyla, she got a bath and she passed out in no time. Jo took a shower after Lyla and I got in last. We watched TV for a little while and Jo fell asleep first so now I'm sitting here in total darkness waiting to fall asleep. Lyla's in bed next to me and she's sleeping like a log. Jo's in the bed next to us and she hasn't made a peep either. She doesn't snore, doesn't breathe heavy and doesn't make any noise while she sleeps. She's a married woman now so I guess she needs her beauty rest. She said herself that being proposed to by Goofy was the coolest thing that's ever happened to her. I kind of want to know who the guy in Goofy suit was today. He must've thought Jo was hot. She is though. Especially in those tight shorts she was wearing today. I guess Jo is the type that you see her and you automatically want to wife her, just based off the way she looks. If Goofy knew her personality though…he would've proposed to her a long time ago.

I roll over on my side to finally try and get some sleep. You know, Jo's trying to get me back into the dating scene. I appreciate it too. She cares about my happiness and she wants me to get back out there. I should do the same for her. I know a lot of nice, single guys that would like to date her. Maybe I'll talk to her tomorrow about the possibility of her dating again too. If she can talk me into putting myself back out there, surely I can talk her into it as well. If and when Jo and I start dating, I'm going to make sure we still set aside certain times for ourselves so we can remain friends. I like her, I want to be her friend for as long as possible. So I think, no matter if I'm dating and she is too, I think we're going to go to that Sam Hunt concert together no matter what. I want to keep her in Lyla's life and I want to keep her in my life too. She's a good friend. And today, the thought of maybe…dating her crossed my mind but as quickly as it crossed it, it faded back out. She's too good of a friend and too involved in Lyla's life for us to screw it up by dating. Just imagine if we had a bad breakup. Then I screwed Lyla out of her best friend. So although Jo's pretty, sexy, hot…all of that, she's off limits for me. I wouldn't dare date her.

I fluff up the pillow I'm lying on and close my eyes. I'm just as tired as Lyla was. I feel like I could pass out too. I've been up since 5:30 yesterday morning and I spent the entire day walking around a park. I'm exhausted. And just as I start to drift off into a peaceful slumber, something of course, interrupts that.

"No…" In the bed next to ours, the sheets ruffle and she stirs quietly. Don't tell me she talks in her sleep. "No." Her entire body shifts under her covers and I hear her breathing quicken. "I didn't!" She gets louder, which makes Lyla stir a little bit. If she wakes Lyla up, I'm not going to be able to get her back to sleep. She cannot wake Lyla up. "Mmmm!" She moans and turns again. I quietly get out of my bed to see if I can wake her up before she wakes Lyla up. I gently tap her on her shoulder. "NO STOP!" She snatches away from me but it's clear that she's sleeping. "STOP! I DIDN'T MEAN…" She's still very heavily asleep. "I didn't mean it! It was an accident!" I grab her shoulder and shake her softly. "NO STOP IT! MARK!"

"Jo!" I grab both her shoulders and shake her hard. "Wake up!" Her eyes snap open and she wails for a second before she gets herself together. I glance over at Lyla and find that she's still asleep through all of her shouting. I breathe a sigh of relief for that fact and turn my attention back to Jo. She's breathing very hard, she has sweat lining her forehead and she's looking around. I think she's scared but of what? I don't know. "…Are you alright?" She snatches away from me again and buries her face back in her pillow. "Jo, what's the matter?"

"Just go away." Her face is buried in her pillow but if I didn't know any better, I'd say she's crying. "I'm fine…It was a bad dream." She's gasping, like she's trying to breathe from crying so hard. "Just go away…please." I put my hand against her back. "I'll talk to you in the morning…" She sniffs. That's the first time I've heard Jo cry. I hear her crying but please believe, she won't let me see it. She's not going to let me see her cry. But Jo doesn't cry. Something's seriously wrong with her. I stoke my hand up and down her back. "Alex, DAMMIT! I said go away!" Also the first time I've ever heard Jo raise her voice, let alone at me. So I take my hand off her back and I do.

I go away.


	25. Unexpectedly

He takes his hand off of my back and I hear his footsteps as he walks back across the room to his own bed. When he took his hand off my back, part of me felt empty and just slightly lost. Like maybe he was supposed to have his hand on my back and I just barked at him and chased him away. I feel horrible for yelling at him the way I did; I really do. But I just need to be left alone right now. There's nothing Alex—of anyone, for that matter—can do to make me feel okay. I know myself better than anyone knows me and I know when I need to be left alone and when I need to be comforted. This surely isn't an instance where any amount of comforting can help me in any kind of way. I snivel and move my head to a dry portion of my pillow. There's a soaking wet blob on my pillow from where my tears fell at and even though I have about five other dry, soft pillows at my disposal, I don't feel like lifting my head up and grabbing one. I'd rather lie here on my wet pillow than pick my head up right now. I'm not sure if I'm nursing myself back to sleep right now or if I'm nursing my pride since I just cried in front of him. Either way it goes, I still can't stop crying. I'm trying to put a lid on my feelings and stop my tears but I can't. The harder I try to stop crying, the harder I actually cry.

If I could ask myself one question, it would be why now? Of all the other times I could've had nightmares about the accident and broken down about it, why now? Why wait until I'm all the way in Disney World and had the best day of my life in a LONG time to start dreaming about it? It's like someone—maybe Mark—is punishing me for having such a good day and having thoughts about Alex like that. After doing what I did, I'm not meant to have a good time and I'm especially not meant to be thinking about moving on and wanting to date other men. I think I'm being punished for that. Punished for having a good time when my husband and my baby are dead. Punished for even having thoughts about wanting to date Alex when my husband's only been dead for seven months. Some might ask how the hell having a nightmare could possibly be punishment, but please believe me when I say that it is. The nightmare I just had is the cruelest form of punishment I've ever been subjected to. It was so real. Everything about it was so real. My hips even started to hurt and my ears were ringing from the sound of my own screaming. It was so scarily realistic. The only way I knew I was dreaming is from the way the dream kept jumping around. One minute I was stuck in the car with Mark hanging by his seatbelt beside me. The next minute, I was lying in a hospital bed listening to my mom cry and pray to the God she doesn't believe in for me to be okay. And then they were trying to tell me that I wasn't alone. The doctors were trying to tell me that I shared my body—for three months—with someone else without even knowing it.

Clearly I'm being punished for this and nobody can convince me otherwise, because why else would I just now begin to dream about it? It happened seven months ago and up until tonight, I never once had a nightmare about it. Sure, memories would flash through my head every so often in the weeks following the accident, but they usually just faded right back out. Those times, I would be in too much pain to even think about what happened, I'd be too tired of being dragged in and out of courtrooms to properly process the fact that my husband and my…my _baby_ were dead. So yeah, the memories would come and go in the weeks following the accident but never, ever, ever did I have a single gut-wrenching nightmare like the one I just had until today. Until today, when I smiled for the first time in seven months, when I laughed for the first time in seven months and when I actually considered the possibility of going on a date with someone else. If there is a God, he clearly doesn't believe that I deserve to be happy and in another relationship. I hate to say it, but I agree with the God, whether he exists or not.

I don't know what was scarier in my dream; the sound of my voice cracking when I was screaming and begging for my husband to wake up, the sound of my mother…the strongest woman I know…breaking down the way she did over my body when I was still in this medically induced coma; or reliving the same feeling I felt when the doctor that bolted my shattered pelvis back together told me that my baby didn't make it. Told me that he called in a fetal surgeon and an obstetrician and they did everything they could. If you've never heard those words come from a doctor's mouth before, be grateful. If you have heard those words come out of a doctors mouth however, you know what I mean when I say that those five words; those "we did everything we could" means absolutely nothing. That's a load of bullshit if I've ever heard one in my life. I don't…I don't mean to be such a bitch. I don't mean to come off as callous, hard, shallow and emotionless. Just believe me when I say that losing your husband and your unborn baby all in the same day…that does things to you. It does things to you and when those things are done, it just feels a hell of a lot better to not feel at all.

I sniff once again and take a deep breath. I really should try and get some sleep. I don't know what time Alex is trying to wake up and head down to Epcot tomorrow. I imagine he wants to get up pretty early so that we have enough time to make it through the entire park in one day and I've already wasted about half an hour sitting here crying when it's already around 12:30. I wipe my face with the already wet pillowcase and lift my head up to finally switch it out with a dry one. As soon as I pick my head up off the pillow though, my ears start ringing much like they rang when I was screaming in my dream. I shake my head at myself for being pathetic and slam my head back down in the wet pillow since it seems like I'm not over my little episode yet and it's likely that I'll start crying again. I muffle my mouth with the pillow and end up moaning into the pillow before I start crying again.

Would it help if I said that I was sorry? Because I am. I'm so sorry for everything I've done. I know saying sorry won't bring my husband back and it surely won't make the fact that I lost my baby hurt any less but I just think that I need to know it. I am so, so sorry. I'm just stupid, I guess. It was a mistake. It was an honest-to-god mistake. A mistake that cost me everything but a mistake nonetheless. Or maybe it was a momentary lapse of judgment on my part. It had to have been something because I knew. I knew as soon as I got behind that wheel that I didn't need to be driving. I was so drunk that I could hardly walk but I somehow thought I was okay to drive? I groan into the pillow once again as my stomach muscles start to ache from the sobs that have been rocking my body. It's dead silent in the room aside from my occasional crying moans, but beside me, I feel the mattress sink in. I barely felt it and surely didn't hear it because the mattress is just that soft, but I did feel something. Next to where I'm lying, I feel the blankets tousle a bit and the mattress move just slightly. Next, I feel a hand against my back. "Shh…"

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I tried to fall asleep. I tried to ignore her, put it out of my mind and fall asleep since I'm going to need as much rest as I can possibly get since we're going to be walking around a park tomorrow/today. But as I laid there in my bed next to my sleeping daughter and closed my eyes, I kept hearing her. The hum of the air conditioning unit drowned out the sounds of her sobbing but eventually, I just tuned out the air conditioning and all I was left with was the sound of her bawling her eyes out into her pillow. She wasn't being loud, nor was she being inconsiderate. She cries softly, barely audible. But I made it a point to listen. I was trying to hear it and so I did. I know she told me to "go away" and she really sounded like she meant it when she said it, but how could I? I know that touching her could possibly make her yell at me again but that's a risk that I'm willing to take. I just need to know if she's okay. She's crying so hard. "Shh…" I rest my hand in the middle of her back and adjust my positioning as I lie down next to her on the bed. Her head is facing away from me but I think she's actually going to let me stay here. Her head is to the side and facing away from me, she's laying on her stomach and her arms are resting up underneath the pillow she's laying on. She doesn't stop crying when I touch her though. She's hiccupping and trying to catch her breath. "Are you okay?" I whisper to her. Very honestly, she shakes her head. "It was…It was only a dream, Jo." I start moving my hand up and down her back, slowly at first just to see if she's going to tell me to get off at all. "It wasn't real."

"B-but it was." Her voice is unlike anything I've ever heard before and admittedly, it scares me a little. Not because the tone she's taking is scary but because Jo's voice is usually bubbly, energetic and sweet. Her voice tonight is haggard, cracking and very breathy. "It was real…it was so real."

"No it wasn't." I prop myself up on one elbow as I drag my fingertips up and down her spinal column. "I'm real. I'm real, you're real and this right here? This is real. Not that dream you just had. It was a dream. It wasn't real. It was over when you woke up. No part of that dream was real." She nods her head and just barely picks her head up. She coughs very softly and puts her head back down. "…Well, what was it about?" She shakes her head this time. "Don't wanna talk about it?" She shakes again. "Well it was only a dream. It wasn't real. You don't have to cry. It wasn't real."

"Yes it was, don't you get it?" She props herself up on her hands and actually turns her head to face me. It's dark in the room with the only light coming from the nightlight in the bathroom that's shining through since the bathroom door is open. Her cheeks are shining in the dim light from the tears making them wet, her eyes are glistening with tears lining the rims of them and her bottom jaw is trembling like crazy. "It's all real, Alex. It's all real…it might've been a dream but it's real. It's real and I live it every single day and I want to forget it. I wanna forget it but I can't…I can't." She puts her head down and her entire body just…shakes because she literally just broke down. I grab her arm and she yanks away from me for a moment before she just submits and gives in to me. She lets me pull her over and it doesn't take her long to realize what I'm trying to do. To my immense surprise, she actually helps me do it. Her head falls on my bare chest and her arms wrap around my waist as my own arms wrap around her upper body. She buries her face in my chest like it's a pillow and just lets it all out. My chest is soaking wet but I don't mind.

Her hands rest flat against my back since her arms are around my waist and her hands are stuffed behind my back. I continue rubbing her back with my fingertips and she seems to like that because she's calming down a little. See, I knew Jo was capable of feeling. I'm not surprised she had a breakdown though. When you bottle your feelings up the way she's been doing, they come out all at once and they just come in a flood of issues and it most likely results in a breakdown. Something tells me that she's not nearly as strong as she tries to get me to believe she is. I don't have a problem holding her until she's done crying though. I'll lie here all night and rub her back if she needs me to. "It's okay." I whisper and trace my fingers across her shoulders in addition to her back. I trail my fingers back down to her lower back and they slide across a small indentation in her hip, so I turn my head to see what it is. It's another scar. I don't question it even though I want to.

She sniffs softly and inhales. When she exhales, I feel her breath against my chest and I feel her wet eyelashes as she blinks. "It was a car accident." She whispers and her breath blows against my chest again as she speaks. I don't interrupt her. I think she just needs someone to listen to her and I'll be that person. "His birthday fell on a Wednesday…and it was a weekday, so we couldn't celebrate it right away since he had things to do. He was the mayor, so he was always busy…with meetings and signings and stuff." She sniffs and clears her throat. "But his parents wanted to celebrate his 30th birthday, so we waited until Friday to have the party…and we had the party at this parents' house across town…so they could invite their friends and stuff. And there was… _a lot_ of alcohol there." She sniffs again. "I don't know my limits, I guess. Because I didn't think I was that bad. I…I've always had a problem with that. I just didn't know. I thought I was okay to drive home; convinced Mark that I was okay to drive home and everything. And he gave me his keys. I got behind the wheel and I felt fine. But when I started driving…I knew it was a mistake. I just knew. I couldn't keep my eyes open and I needed to throw up and he just told me to pull over but I was already halfway home by then so I just…I thought I could make it. It was just straight down the road and a left turn and we were home. But we never made it home. _He_ never made it home." She hiccups very softly and continues. "We went head first into one of those…those guardrails they use to block the road off from a cliff. Like…up over the median, head first into the guardrail. And the car almost went over the…the cliff when we hit the rail because it smashed and the tail end shot up. But somehow it went sideways instead and we rolled…six times and landed on the top. And we were hanging by our seatbelts, thank God we were wearing them. And we were um…stuck. Underneath the car, we were stuck…for 45 minutes…"

She finally stops talking and I can't really believe my ears. First off, I can't believe she's actually spilling her guts to me but more than that, I can't believe she was that irresponsible. Jo doesn't seem like the type to make such a horrible judgment call. She seems smart. So that's how she got all her scars? That's why she walks funny sometimes and I'm assuming that's why she doesn't drink. "Oh…Jo, you—" She shakes her head and scoots away from me.

"Alex, don't…I already know." She keeps shaking her head but just to let her know that I'm not judging, I pull her back over to me. "I shattered my entire pelvis…broke every bone in there. Spent 12 weeks in a cast and 13 in a wheelchair." She sounds like she's going to cry again. "I looked over and half my husband's head was gone. I can't get the sound of him crying out of my head. He was alive and he was crying and half his head was gone…it was just…gone and he was still alive somehow. And then he wasn't. He told me he was gonna make it…for me, he said. 'We're gonna get outta this alright, baby' he said…and then nothing else. Next thing I know, I'm in a hospital and I'm circling the drain. And they're telling me…they're telling me…that…" Her voice starts cracking again so I squeeze her tighter. I don't know what else to do besides that. "How do I not know? For three months, how do I not know?" I'm a little confused now but I'll let her vent. "That would've made a difference if I knew. I wouldn't have been drinking that night." She sniffs. "And then you know how that is…you know how…when you find things out, you look back and put the pieces together and then everything makes sense?" She coughs. "Like oh yeah, that's why my stomach felt funny. That's why I felt like there was something in there. That's why my boobs hurt, that's why my period was so light…" Is she saying…? "Three months and I didn't know. I mean who does that? What kind of person doesn't know they're three…months pregnant? What kind of person drinks their baby to death?" She shakes her head. "They said that it was the accident that did it. They said…that they had a heartbeat when I got there, that the alcohol likely didn't cause it. Blunt force trauma and a shattered pelvis…a piece of bone that…that pierced my uterus…that caused it. But it was the alcohol. If I wasn't so stupid, it would've been just fine. I don't care what medical reason caused it, it's my fault and it all goes back to the fact that I was pissy ass drunk and driving a car." She closes her eyes. "And now I can't have anymore. A pelvis made more of metal than it is bone isn't good for having a baby so they just…took that away from me. And I don't need you to tell me how stupid I was, Alex because I already know. I know."

"…I wasn't." I shake my own head and continue to hold her. "I was actually thinking that it's about time you let it all out." I know I should probably be all supportive, offering a moment of silence and all, and I really want to do that. I want to be the supportive friend. But I can't help thinking about how our relationship might have just gone to the next level because she's finally letting me in. It's been exactly one month, one week and three days since I first met Jo. Which means it took me one month, one week and three days to actually get something out of her. Finally, she's not acting like she has to be the strongest person in the world around me. I've finally gotten through that wall of hers and I don't know exactly how I _should_ feel about that, but I feel a little bit relieved to know that she's not a complete robot. "Is that why you left Massachusetts?" I don't want to push it any further but of course, I have a lot of questions. She just dropped a little bit of a bombshell on me.

"I was tired of being called a murderer." The tone of her voice changes and she's whispering again. She slowly picks her head up off my chest and turns her head to face me. Our eyes meet and unlike the last time we looked each other in the eye after having a meaningful conversation, there is no electricity. No, I think we're past that. I think our hearts, our feelings are past that. This time when I look in her eyes, I feel a straight connection. It's like picking up a cell phone without service. The first time we looked at each other, the phone had no service and all we got was a dial tone. This time when we look at each other, someone's on the other end of the phone. It's not an electrical spark anymore, it's a full-blown electrical current. I wonder if she feels that too. "…Don't look at me like that." Her eyes well up with tears again. "Don't look at me like that, Alex. I know you think I'm horrible, but…" She shakes her head. "Please don't look at me like that. Like…Like I'm a…a killer."

"I wasn't looking at you like that…" I guess that answers my question about whether or not she felt the same kind of connection. She thought I was judging her. "There's nothing you can say to me that'll make me change the way I think about you, Jo." Her face is all puffy. Her eyes are glistening with tears, her cheeks are soaking wet and her nose is red…but I think she looks really pretty. "I form my own opinions…and I know what kind of person you are. I don't give a damn about anything you've done that you're not proud of…we all have things to be ashamed of and things we did but wish we hadn't. I wasn't looking at you any kind of way and I wasn't thinking anything bad of you." I watch her face turn from pure shame to a little bit of happiness. Not much, but just a little. "I was just thinking of how hard it must be for you to walk around with something like that on your shoulders…and I was thinking about how strong you are for being able to put something like that behind you. I would've never guessed…"

She starts wiping her face like her tears are a big inconvenience. I think she's back to her old, hiding her feelings self. She's wiping her tears away like she's trying to convince me and herself that they were never even there in the first place. She sniffs, clears her throat and rolls her eyes around. "You're my best friend, Alex." She smirks just slightly and keeps wiping her face. "Really…you are. I don't…" She sniffs and shakes her head. "I don't know what I would do without you sometimes."

"You're my best friend too, Jo." I don't think friends do what I'm about to do, but I'm tempted and I don't think she'd mind. I run my fingers through her hair and push it back, away from her face. We freeze for a moment; my hand underneath her chin and both her hands up underneath my back. Our eyes are locked in each other's and I don't have to wonder this time if she feels that connection. I can tell by the way she's looking at me that she does. Neither one of us blink, we just stare. My thoughts were running at a thousand miles a minute. From being glad she called me her best friend, to feeling downright sorry for her, to wanting to be the one that wiped away her tears, to wanting to be the supportive best friend. But as soon as our eyes locked, my thoughts stopped. I can't even remember what I was thinking about at this point. There's a time when staring at each other becomes awkward but with Jo, I don't think it's ever going to become awkward. It doesn't surprise me that she's the first one to break the stare. What she breaks it with though, is more important than the stare itself. Very slowly, she begins to close her face in on mine and for the first time tonight, she's not completely wrong with what I was thinking. We were thinking the same thing. I tilt my head to the side opposite the one she tilted hers to and close in on her face.

Our two bottom lips just barely graze each other. I can feel her breath against my two lips and I feel alive. I was tired a moment ago but not anymore. It's as if every nerve in my body shot up to my lips and it's just building up, not able to hold off kissing her. Our bottom lips touch first; hers are so soft and smooth. It feels like warm, polished glass sliding across my lip. She parts her lips a little and so do I. The anticipation is satisfying in itself, I can only imagine what the actual kiss will be like. It's not until this moment that I realize I've been waiting a month, a week and three days to kiss this woman. "…We shouldn't." She whispers to me but she doesn't make any possible effort to pull away. Our bottom lips are still touching but she's telling me that we shouldn't kiss. "We really shouldn't…"

"But I want to." I whisper back and before she can say anything else to stall progress, I jut my head forward to complete the kiss and at the same time, she moves her head forward too. How are her lips so soft? So smooth…perfect. We don't exchange tongues though, and that's another thing that we're on the same page with. We crush our lips together with the exact same intensity but neither one of us feel the need to open our mouths and use tongue. It's not that kind of kiss. It's not lustful, sensual nor is it sexual. It's gentle, affectionate and chaste. Like taking a sip of champagne or wine. Not enough to overdo it but enough to get the affect, the taste. I was right. The anticipation buildup only made this more worth it. And we pull apart at the exact same time. I open my eyes very slowly and when I do, I see that Jo's already opened hers and she's looking down, refusing to look me in my eye. I use my thumb to wipe a little bit of spit off the side of her lip. I end up tracing the shape of her lips with my thumb and she slowly boasts an innocent, soft, toothless smile.

"Goodnight, Alex."

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I'm still a little bit messed up from last night; not necessarily over the nightmare I had but over everything, really. I'm not quite sure what I'm feeling right now. I still haven't quite decided if I liked the fact that we kissed last night and I haven't decided how I feel about the fact that he held me, all night. I woke up this morning in his arms, laying on his bare chest. I don't really remember anything that happened after we kissed, all I remember is pulling away from the kiss, him touching my mouth after the kiss, me telling him goodnight and me lying down on his chest again. I don't remember how I got him to stay in the bed with me and I don't remember what made him want to. I don't remember him getting underneath the covers with me and I don't remember wrapping my arms around him. It happened though, because when I woke up this morning, my head was directly in the middle of his chest, my arms were around his waist and one of my legs was draped across his lower body. His arms were around me too, and his head was against my head. We slept like that all night, I do believe. Thankfully, I woke up before everyone. I woke up before Alex and before Lyla. Immediately, I tapped Alex on the shoulder and he automatically knew what I was tapping him for. He had to hurry up and scramble in order to get back in the bed with Lyla before she woke up and saw us. That's crazy, isn't it? The fact that we have to hide the fact that we fell asleep together from his four year old daughter, I mean. You would've thought that I slept with a married man with the way Alex was scrambling around to make it back to his bed. We both know how bad that could've been if Lyla had saw us sleeping together. I really don't think she'd be okay with that.

I wish I could read Alex's mind because as of right now, I have no idea what he's thinking. Neither one of us have mentioned the kiss or the fact that we slept together and we've been awake since 9:30 this morning. It's currently 1:00 in the afternoon. I'm not quite sure if the kiss and the sleeping together is something that we don't have to mention or if it's something we're avoiding. I think it's one of those things we don't have to mention. We both know it happened, we just haven't addressed it. A kiss can work miracles for a relationship, I guess. When Lyla isn't looking, Alex will just randomly grab my hand and hold it as we're walking around the park and he's perfectly okay with eating off of me now. We didn't kiss with tongue or anything but still, I guess kissing someone brings a new level of trust. We stopped at an ice cream pavilion and got ice cream. Alex offered me to taste some of his and I did and he ate some of mine too. I know that's a simple gesture and probably nothing major but to me, it is. Ice cream isn't just something you share with random people, especially when it's a cone that you've licked over and over.

What I like the most about Alex is the fact that he hasn't even thought to mention what we talked about last night. I think he knows that I hate being vulnerable and vulnerable is an understatement compared to what I was like last night. I haven't cried like that over Mark and my baby's death…ever. Yet somehow, lying in Alex's arm made it okay. Sure, I bawled my eyes out and I looked like an idiot in front of him but he passed absolutely no judgment and it felt good to have someone holding me and just listening to me. I don't know if he kissed me because he felt bad for me or if I let him kiss me because I was an emotional mess, but either way it goes, that kiss was special. I may not know what it meant, but I do know that it was very special. It wasn't a tongue-kiss or full-blown makeout but it was very meaningful. I can't say for sure if the kiss brought out any romantic feelings, but I can say that it hasn't changed the fact that I feel like Alex is my absolute best friend in the entire world.

Of course, there were already feelings before the kiss. They weren't very strong and I don't even know if I would call them romantic at this point. But they were feelings nonetheless. Mostly feelings of wanting to explore the possibility of a relationship and feelings of wondering what we could become, if anything at all. They weren't really romantic feelings as much as they were feelings of wonder, attraction maybe. I didn't realize how much I wanted to kiss Alex until we actually did. But it's not something that I really want to do again. I mean of course, if I had the opportunity to kiss Alex again, I would take it. I wouldn't reject a kiss from him. But the kiss isn't what I've been thinking about. It's not something that's been sweeping me off my feet and occupying my every thought. What's been occupying my every thought is what I actually feel for this man. He's one of the only people that has heard my story and told me that he doesn't think I'm a horrible person. He didn't judge me. When everyone else did, he didn't. He wrapped his arms around me and let me cry on his chest. He's my best, best friend. If he never becomes my boyfriend, that's okay…as long as I can keep him as my best friend.

"Hey Alex…I'm gonna run to the bathroom before we go inside, okay?" We're standing in line to see the Finding Nemo exhibit, which is basically just a really fancy aquarium with all the characters from Finding Nemo in it. I really have to pee though and I saw a bathroom off in the corner, near the exit. Lyla's holding onto his hand and sucking on a lollipop while we wait. She's not as fascinated with Epcot as me and Alex have been, but that's probably because all Epcot really is, is a bunch of exhibits and hardly any rides. Her most favorite part already happened, and it was when we took her to the Chinatown exhibit and she came in contact with Mulan, Mushu and Shang. She's been really good though, I have to admit that much. "I'll be back soon, just wait up for me." Alex nods his head at me and takes my bag for me. We ate lunch at Mulan's Nine Dragons Restaurant and I had a big helping of Nine Dragons Fried Rice. It was to DIE for but I got super full and Alex paid $72.00 for our bill and I wasn't about to waste it so I boxed it up. I'll eat it at the hotel later.

"Where going, Doedoe?" Lyla takes her lollipop out of her mouth and looks up at me with worrisome green eyes. Her lips are all purple from her lollipop and she's very sticky but she's so cute I can't stand it. She tried to wear the dress she got during her makeover yesterday to the park today but Alex wouldn't let her. Instead, she's wearing a frilly purple tutu and a pink Sleeping Beauty t-shirt. I did her hair this morning. She was really upset that her princess bun didn't stay in while she was sleeping last night so I put it back in for her and tied a pink ribbon around it to add some prettiness to it. "Comin' back?"

"I'm going to the potty, honey. I'll be right back." I turn to leave but I just had a thought, so I turn back around. "Do you have to pee?" She wrinkles her brow and tilts her head. "Do you have to go pee pee, Lyla?" She looks like she's thinking about it. Eventually, she nods her head. "Come with me. We're gonna go pee pee in the potty okay?" Alex looks at me like I'm nuts. "Don't worry, I've got her." His look softens into the same look he's been giving me all day. I haven't quite deciphered that look yet. It's something crossed between "you're amazing" and "I've kissed you". I don't know which one he's going for but I haven't figured it out. He's been looking at me like that all day though. I take Lyla's hand. "You wanna go on the potty?" She nods her head. "Alright come on then."

"How?" She looks up at me with her lollipop still in her hand. "…Do it hurt?"

"No, going on the potty doesn't hurt." I walk her into the bathroom and luckily for us, there's not a line. I pick the handicap stall just so we have enough room to maneuver around inside of it. I lock the stall behind us and take her lollipop from her. I put it on top of the paper towel dispenser, with the sucker part hanging off the edge so no germs get on it. Maybe she's not ready to go on the potty but I just think it's a little crazy that she's four and still in diapers. She needs to be exposed to the potty at least. Alex can't take her in the men's room so I might as well bring her with me. "Here, we're gonna pull your pants down." I pull her tutu down and the pair of purple shorts she has on underneath of it. I stick my finger into her pull-up to see if she's going to need a new one. She's still dry, which is good. She might actually have to pee. I pull down her pull-up too. "Here, let me pick you up."

"No Doedoe…no." She starts whining at me a little bit. "No no…no potty."

"Yes potty." I put one of my arms underneath her legs, where they fold and hold her around her back with my other arm. I bend down a little bit so she's hovering over the toilet bowl but I'm just going to hold her. I'm not letting her sit down on these seats. "Go potty. Go pee."

"I get daddy…no potty." She's squirming around.

"Lyla, go potty. It's okay, I promise. It's okay. Just go potty, I promise it's okay. Go pee." She's still whining. "Just go honey. Just go…pee. Act like you have your diaper on and go pee."

"Dada…"

"Daddy can't come in here. It's the girls' bathroom so Jojo has to be in here with you." She really needs to go. My arms are getting tired of dangling her over the seat. "You'll be such a big girl if you go pee pee in the potty. Such a big girl." She looks down between her legs and I start to hear the sound of pee hitting the toilet water below. "ALRIGHT!" I crack the biggest smile. I can't believe she's peeing in the potty! She's still going too! She really had to pee! There's a little bit of pee trickling down my arm but it doesn't bother me much. I feel like such a proud mother and she's not even my baby! She's peeing in the potty! "All done?" I ask her and she nods her head. "Good job girl!" I put her down on the floor and grab some toilet paper. I wipe my arm off from where she peed on me and toss it into the toilet. I grab another wad of toilet paper and bawl it up. "I told you it didn't hurt. I'm so proud of you for pee peeing like a big girl." I tap her kneecap so she knows to open her legs and I wipe her real good. I pull her diaper and her pants back up. "I'm so proud of you. Gimme a big hug." I hold my arms out. She's smiling so I know she's proud of herself as well. "Hugs?" She wraps her arms around me. "See? I knew you could do it." I squeeze her and rock from side to side. I'm so very proud of her. "You're such a big girl."

"It not even hurt, Doedoe." She steps back and looks at her pee in the toilet. "It not hurt." She puts her hands on my cheeks. "You was wight, it not hurt."

"I know. You're so big." She smashes my cheeks into a fish face and I wiggle my lips to imitate a real fish, which makes her giggle. She puckers her lips and I think she's imitating a fish too, but I was wrong. She actually kisses me on the cheek. "Awww, thank you baby." She's never kissed me on the cheek before…she's never kissed me at all. Does that mean she's comfortable with me? She kissed me. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like I'm Alex and she's giving me kisses like she does when he asks her too, except I didn't ask.

I've been getting a lot of kisses lately.


	26. Some Mad Hope

We left the park a few hours ago and we didn't even spend a lot of time there. Epcot is just basically exhibits, displays and rides that poor Lyla isn't big enough to get on. We tried to take her on the Space Expedition ride but she was a few inches too short to get on it. She was really upset so Alex and I took her to a smoothie stand and got her a strawberry smoothie. It was clear that Epcot really isn't a park for children her age so instead of dragging her all around it, we just took her back to the hotel and took the opportunity to explore the hotel for entertainment. She was really upset about the fact that she was too little to get on the Space Expedition but when we looked around the hotel, that all went away. The hotel we're staying in is called the Beach Club Resort and there are a bunch of things to keep children entertained. They have something called the Sandcastle Club here at the hotel and it's basically like a daycare where parents drop their kids off to be alone for a few hours. It has toys, games, computers, everything. Alex and I tried to get Lyla to say there for an hour, not because the two of us wanted alone time but because we—or I, rather—thought it would be a good idea for Lyla to interact with children her age. She didn't want to go though, and we didn't force her. Instead, we went back to the hotel room and put a bathing suit on her. We went swimming in the outdoor pool instead and when she got tired of swimming, we tried out the arcade where Alex won her a little stuffed monkey from Aladdin. She got tired after a while, so we brought her back to the room and gave her a bath and took her down to the restaurant downstairs to eat and she passed out as soon as she laid down in bed.

She actually did meet someone her own age. There was a play area down at the pool and while Alex and I sat on a pair of beach chairs and talked, Lyla went to the play area. She was talking to another four year old named Chloe and the two of them were having fun discussing the princesses on Chloe's bathing suit. They played together for a little while and I thought that was sweet. She should be interacting with people other than her father and her grandparents and me. She should have friends her own age; friends that can invite her to their birthday parties, on playdates and things like that. She'll probably never see Chloe again after we leave here, but that's not the point. The point is that she actually spoke to someone and related to them on her own level today. She went pee on the potty twice, once with me at the park and once with Alex here in the hotel room. She tapped him on his shoulder and told him that she had to pee and he took her. She peed like a big girl today and she made a friend and I couldn't be prouder of my little baby. Okay, secretly…I've been calling her "my little baby" but only in my head. I wouldn't dare say it out loud because she's NOT my baby but I think of her as mine in my own little mind. She's my baby.

Since she's laying asleep on the bed next to me, I turn my head to the side a little and look at her. She's lying flat on her back with her head on my pillow. Her head is to the side, facing me and one of her hands is up by her face and the other is resting on her stomach. Her yellow t-shirt is rising up and her bellybutton is hanging out the bottom of her shirt. She's wearing a pink and white pull-up and her legs are spread open. She literally passed out when her head hit the pillow. She makes me smile and I don't want Alex to notice that I'm smiling at his daughter so I wipe it away. I wouldn't overstep any boundaries and I swear I'll always stay in my place, but nobody can tell me that she's not my baby. I put my fingertips at her temple and push her hair back so it's not lingering in her face. "…Do you have anything planned for tomorrow?" I lie on my side and prop myself up on my elbow so I can face him when I talk to him. "Anything special?" Tomorrow's actually her birthday. Tomorrow's the 15th and that's her birthday.

"Not really." He's laying down in the empty bed, sprawled out by himself since Lyla's in the bed with me. His hands are resting behind his head, his legs are taking up the entire space of the bed and he's watching whatever's playing on the TV. I think it's SportsCenter but I'm literally the last person anyone would want to ask about sports so I don't know for sure. "We're doing the Animal Kingdom tomorrow, so she should have fun with that. She likes animals." He sticks his hand in the bowl of peanuts he has on the bed next to him and eats a handful. "I'm gonna get her a cake. The kitchen downstairs will make a cake as long as you put the order in at least six hours before, so I'll put the order in tomorrow morning. I'll get her a cake and we can eat it here in the hotel room. But that's pretty much it. I could've saved the dinner with the princesses for her birthday but she wasn't going to have that. She wanted that right then and there." He eats another handful of peanuts. "Bringing her here is special enough, don't you think?" He actually turns his head and looks at me. I think he caught me smiling at Lyla this time but I play it off like it was nothing. I clear the smile off my face and act like I was about to yawn or something. I nod my head to answer his question and cover my mouth to really fake the yawn. "Tired?" He shifts his body so his position on the bed mirrors mine. He's propped up on his elbow and facing me as well. "It's not even 8:30 and you're tired?"

"Long day." I halfway shrug and pick up Lyla's hand. I think I might love this little girl. She kissed me on my cheek in the bathroom earlier and that was it for me, I think. All bets are off now. I love her and she's my little baby. I rub my thumb along her tiny fingers and bring her hand up to my mouth to kiss it. I glance over at Alex and find that he was watching me with the same look he's been giving me all day, ever since we kissed last night. I recognize that look but I don't really think Alex would look at me like that when he doesn't have a reason to. His eyes are all sparkly and his mouth has a half-grin shape to it. It's the look that a guy would give you if he was trying to figure out how to ask you out. It's a nervous look, with some hints of amazement in it and maybe even a touch of lust. It's the look Mark would give me after every time he told me that he loved me. I think that's the look Alex is giving me, but it makes no sense for him to be looking at me like that. "Alex…" I gingerly put Lyla's hand back on her stomach where I picked it up from and adjust her t-shirt so her bellybutton isn't hanging out anymore. "If something ever happens…between you and me…" I look him in his eyes so he knows that this is something serious. "A fallout or something…where we can't be friends anymore…" I stroke Lyla's baby soft cheek. "Please don't take her away from me. No matter what happens between me and you, I just…I want to be around her, you know? I wanna see her grow up. So just…don't take her away from me. That's all I ask."

He reaches over on the dresser and grabs his bottle of rootbeer before he even says anything. I'm not sure if he thinks that I have more to say, but for some reason he's still quiet. He circles his tongue around the spittle of the bottle before turning it up to his lips and taking a sip. "…You love her, Jo?" He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and softens a belch. I raise my eyebrows. He kind of just laid that all out there, didn't he? I wasn't expecting such forwardness. "You can tell me if you do, I'll get it. You don't have to be scared to admit it." He holds the bottle to his lips one more time. "I kind of already know the answer…" He mumbles.

"Well…yeah." I look down at Lyla again. Her perfectly shaped eyebrows, her pink little lips, her pug nose and her chubby cheeks…it all makes me melt. "How could I not? I take up a lot of time with her, Alex. It's kind of hard not to...that's my baby girl." I mumble that last part and sigh. "What does it matter anyway? I'm just asking you to just…not take her away from me. Even if I'm being a bitch and you're being an ass. Just put that aside and let me still see her. Can you do that for me?

"I wouldn't take _you_ away from _her._ Not the other way around." He licks his lips and stares down at the bottle of rootbeer in his hand, as if he's reading the label or something. "She loves you too and you know…" He puts the rootbeer back on the nightstand. "No matter how _amazing_ of a father I am, she's gonna need someone like you. To teach her about…boys and all that girly crap that I don't even want to think about right now." I roll my eyes at his need to over-compliment himself and smirk. He's such a douchebag but the worst part about it is that he's a closet douchebag. He's only a douchebag to people he knows and that's the worst kind. He tricks everyone else into thinking that he's all nice and gentlemanlike but for people like me that truly know him, he's an asshole. "You don't really have to worry about that though. I already thought that over."

"Thank you." I sigh again and carefully slide off the bed. I'm very careful not to move too much and wake Lyla up. Since we're done talking, I softly pad over to the mini fridge and open it up. I had chicken, mashed potatoes and corn for dinner down at the hotel dining room but I only got a half-portion because I was still a little bit full from the Chinese food I had at Epcot. But I'm hungry now and I still have my fried rice so I'm gonna heat that up. I take the plastic container out of the fridge and take the plastic lid off the top. I stick it in the microwave for two minutes and sit down at the edge of Alex's bed since it's the closest one to the microwave. He's right back to watching TV and eating peanuts. Most of the time, it's as if neither one of us are even in the room; that's how much we ignore each other. He usually watches TV, I sit on my phone and/or play with Lyla and that's how we spend our time in the hotel. The only thing that's even slightly inconvenient is shower time around here. When I shower, I take everything in the bathroom with me. I take the clothes I plan on changing into, my towel, my facial cleanser, my hair stuff, everything. I shower, get out, dry off and change in the bathroom so we don't see each other naked. Alex occasionally comes out shirtless but that's the extent of it. It's a little inconvenient at times because I'll sweat like a pig because the bathroom is always still sweltering hot from my shower and then Alex bitches at me because I used all the hot water. Well…he only bitched at me tonight for using the hot water. But I had a lot to do in the shower tonight.

I had to wash my hair, which I haven't done since we've been here. I had to shave everything. My armpits, my legs, my areas. While we were at the park earlier, I just kept thinking about how we slept together last night and I was a big, hairy, gorilla mess. Since Mark passed, I usually forgo shaving as much as I used to. I used to shave my legs once a week, my armpits once a week and my areas every other day, since Mark was a huge fan of having me bald down where it counts. I kind of am a fan of that too, I guess. I just feel cleaner when I'm bald. No offense to the women that just let it grow out and flow free, no disrespect there. Do whatever you want. I just can't stand having hair between my legs. It makes me feel like an ape. Anyway, I slept in Alex's arms with hairy legs and hairy pits last night and although I doubt he noticed my prickly legs and my fuzzy pits, I'm a little mortified that there's a possibility that he did. It felt incredibly good to sleep in Alex's arms, by the way. I didn't realize that I was sleeping in his arms, that's how dreamlessly I slept. It was the best sleep I've had in a very, very long time. When I woke up in his arms this morning, I felt…weird, I guess. It was a good weird though. He was holding me around my torso and I was holding him around his waist and damn, it felt so good to know that I slept there all night. I could've stayed there all day, all week, all month, for the rest of forever. I could've died in his arms and I couldn't think of a better way to go. When I had to wake him up, there was a very large part of me that just wanted to hold onto the moment. I wanted to stay in his arms, listening to the beating of his heart, feeling his chest pump up and down and hearing his breath. I wanted to prolong it. But both of us knew that if Lyla had woken up before us and saw us laying together in bed, it would've been disastrous. And for that reason, he couldn't stay in my arms and I couldn't stay in his…no matter how badly we wanted to. Anyway, I highly doubt I'll ever sleep in Alex's arms again since it's basically forbidden, but it felt good anyway.

The microwave beeps to let me know that my food is done, so I open it up and take the plastic container of fried rice out. I grab a black plastic fork off the cup sitting on the counter next to the microwave and mix the rice around before I sit back down. I hold a forkful to my mouth and take a bite to test and see if it's hot enough. It's hot enough and it's delicious. I chew it and turn around to go back to my bed when I notice that Alex is looking at me and not the TV, which prompts me to hold my food away from my body and put my head down to look at myself. I don't know what he's looking at. I'm in a red camisole and a pair of fluffy black and white zebra print pajama pants. I even have socks on and I'm even wearing a bra, which is something I wouldn't be doing if I were at home and alone. "What?" I look at him, mouthful of rice. He's still looking at me, he's not hiding it and he made no effort to look away. "You want a bite?" He says nothing, just keeps staring. "Here." I walk over to his bed and climb onto it, right next to him. I hand him the container of rice. "Don't get your chewed up peanut crap all over my fork either."

"Shut up." He picks up the fork and takes a heaping bite of my fried rice. "Mmm…damn, that is good. Hmmm." He swallows his bite and takes another. I don't really care much, he can eat whatever he wants because if I don't get enough of it and I end up still hungry, _he's_ the one that's gonna pay the room service bill when I order something. I sigh and wait for him to give it back whenever he's done. I turn around and look at the TV so it's not awkward if I watch him eat. My favorite Hershey's chocolate commercial is on, so I softly sing the lyrics to the song that's on the commercial. I love his commercial but it's not long before it's over. "Hey Jo…" He swallows his third bite and hands the container back to me. I turn my head back to him and take it. "What song was just playing?"

"Worth It, Fifth Harmony." I scoop up some rice on my fork.

"Yeah…let them sing it." He cracks a joke and since my mouth is full, I just narrow my eyes at him. He starts laughing. "You set yourself up…" I squint my eyes harder. "Are you mad at me?" I clench my jaw. "Sorry Jo….you just set yourself up." He's still cracking up laughing. "Sorry."

"No, fuck you bitch." I mumble to him after I swallow my food and his eyes widen by about ten sizes. He wasn't expecting me to cuss at him like that, I can tell. I shake my head at him. "You're such an ass. How do you live with yourself?" I scrape up some more rice and shovel it into my mouth. "You want the rest?" I offer it to him and he reaches out to take it but I snatch it away. "Too bad!" I switch the wad of rice to the side of my mouth and continue to chew it. He literally dives forward at me and almost makes me spill my rice all over the place. "Alex!" I fall backwards onto the end of the bed and hold my rice up so it doesn't fall. He's climbing all over the bed to get the container off of me but I roll around so he can't. "Stop it! You're gonna wake her up…" I glance over at Lyla who's still out cold. He's hovering over my body and reaching for the container. "Quit! It's mine!"

"No, you think it's cute to mess with me." He snatches the container off of me and sits down on my legs, which hurts but I don't to tell him. I don't want him to feel like he hurt me when all we're doing is playing around. It's not his fault my legs hurt. Plus, I told him that I don't hurt at all. He asked me earlier at the park and I lied because I didn't want him to think that he had to make special accommodations for me and my messed up hips. He told me that he was a doctor and he knows how much pain broken pelvises cause patients and he asked me if I was alright to actually be walking around the park. I told him that I don't hurt and I was fine. "Here." He picks up the fork inside the container and scoops some up on it. He holds it by my mouth but I'm a little bit skeptical. He might take it away at the last minute, dump it down my shirt, eat it himself…he's not going to be this nice to me. "You gonna eat it or not?" Warily, I lean my head forward slowly at first. I open my mouth, cautious of what he might do. He gently pushes the fork forward and actually feeds me. I chew it, looking at him like I'm still uncertain of his motives. "More?" I raise an eyebrow. "Okay then." He feeds himself a bite and when he's done, he offers me another. "Either you eat it or I'll eat it all." I roll my eyes and open my mouth. He gives me the last bite of rice and puts the container on the bed next to us but still doesn't get off of my legs. He does, however, move. He lunges forward like he's trying to get up but the fact that he has socks on and the quilt on top of the bed is silky…well socks and silk don't mesh well. He slips and we end up butting heads.

"Owww!" I bring my hand up and hold the side of my head where they collided. I start laughing, mostly at the fact that he slipped and fell like that. He laughs too and it's not until he starts laughing that I realize our exact position. He's between my legs and laying flat against my body and when he laughs, the jolt of his laughter hurts my hips just a little. "…You're crushing me." I make my voice sound like I'm stuck under ten tons of pressure.

"I'm not that heavy, am I?" Still laughing, he shifts all his weight off of my body and onto his elbow as he turns on his side but still manages to hover over me and stay between my legs. He holds the part of his head that hurts too. "You have a hard head."

"And you're still crushing me." I rub my head for a few moments before I take my hand away. I tilt my head slightly so I can look him in his eyes better. Damn, his eyes…his eyes. They're brown, almost green and they're so soft. I can see pain behind his eyes…pain but the fact that he wants to be happy. He wants to be happy but there's still pain behind his eyes. He has beautiful eyes, I could get lost in them. When he looks me in my eyes, I swear I feel like I'm lost. How can eye contact do that to a person? That never even happened with Mark. But when I'm looking into Alex's eyes, I feel like I'm floating off into space; like there's not a single person around and I have not a single care. And his lips…dear god, his lips. I've thought about those lips for the last 24 hours, from the curvature of them down to every last split in them. My fingers twitch for a brief moment before I bring myself back down to earth long enough to lift my hand and rest it on his cheek. He catches my drift, because he rolls back over so that he's completely hovered over me and our faces slowly, oh so slowly, center in on one another. I close my eyes and so does he and our noses are touching. The both of us pause a moment before our lips touch, wanting to preserve this magic moment for as long as possible. The only thing better than kissing Alex is the moments leading up to it. I open my mouth and he opens his.

Just as our lips are about to meet, someone knocks on the door and breaks all our concentration, our tension, our magic, our moment. He pulls back away from my face with quickness but he hovers over me for a moment longer, just looking at me with the exact same look he's been giving me all day. I know the look know, and I was wrong about what I thought it was before. This look was him wanting to do it again. This look dissolves and quickly fades into a look of disappointment, probably because we got interrupted and the both of us know that our kisses are sacred, precious and too far and few between for us to resume where we left off whenever he answers the door. We're not picking up where we left off and we're not going to kiss. He bites his bottom lip and peels his eyes away from mine as the knocking on the door starts again. Swiftly, he gets up off the bed and hurries over to the door.

I sit up on the bed and fix myself. I adjust my tank top, my hair and start to clean up the rice container that's still on the bed. I roll my eyes up to the ceiling and sigh. _Really? You couldn't have just held on for a moment longer? The door HAD to be knocked on at that very moment?_ If this is the big man upstairs trying to punish me again for acting like I want to move on from my head husband, then sincerely, fuck you. Love, Jo. I grumble and get up off the bed so I can throw away the container. I take a peek over at the door to see who it was that knocked. It's Alex's dad and his girlfriend. Their plane must've landed a little early because they weren't supposed to be here until around 10:00. I look at the clock on the cable box. It's 9:01. They're an hour early and an hour early to interrupt me and Alex's kiss. "It's only 9:00, what do you mean she's sleeping?" I hear Alex's dad exclaim as he's dragging bags into the room. At first glance, I had a half a mind to freak out and yell at Alex because he didn't tell me that they're sharing a room with us and two beds. But when I really look, I see that the bags he's dragging in are various shades of pink, purple and yellow. They're gifts for Lyla.

"She had a long day, pop." Alex helps his dad and his dad's girlfriend carry the bags inside. They really went all out, it looks like. There has to be about five or six bags. "Me and Jo are about to head to bed too…sorry you came at a bad time." He sticks all the bags in the corner.

"Hey Jo." Alex's dad greets me.

"Hello, sir." I put a fake smile on and act like I'm busy with getting ready for bed just so I can back Alex up. I walk over to Lyla and pick her up. Her breathing hiccups for a moment when I pick her up but it steadies again and she puts her head on my shoulder. I bend down and use a free hand to pull the covers back. "Here we go baby girl." I whisper in her ear and lie her back down on the pillow. I tuck her in real snug and shut off the light that's directly next to her side of the bed. I probably shouldn't, but I lean down and kiss her on her cheek anyway. I really have to tell myself that she's not actually my baby. "Alex, she's all tucked in." I smile again and put my hands on my hips to make a good impression.

"I'll come get you guys before we go down for breakfast tomorrow morning. I have a rental…we're going to the Animal Kingdom tomorrow and then we're probably just gonna come back here do cake, ice cream, presents…that's all. Are you guys coming with us to the park tomorrow or do you two want the day to settle in? Do you just wanna do cake and ice cream with us?" Alex finishes lining the gift bags up nicely. His dad and his girlfriend stand near the door like they're getting ready to leave. I don't know if Alex can tell, but I can…I can tell that the two of them are definitely screwing. It's just the way they look at each other. They look like they screw. I crack a smile and have to look away just thinking about Alex's dad getting his swerve on. "Alright dad, see you guys. And thanks for coming again." I tuned out too early to hear if they're coming or not. Alex shuts the door behind the two of them and locks it back up.

"…Are they in the room directly next to us?" I walk to the side of my bed that Lyla's not laying on and pull the covers back so I can get ready to go to sleep too. Alex sighs, nods and starts getting ready for bed too. "…Yeah, we'd better hurry up and go to sleep then…before we start hearing the headboard smacking against the wall." I sit down in the bed and untie the drawstrings on my pants. I'll only take my pants off when I'm sitting down because even though I've kissed Alex and almost kissed him and slept with him with no pants on, I still don't want to freely let him see me with no pants on. It's still a little inappropriate and I should still be private about that.

"That's not freaking funny." He pulls his t-shirt over his head and tosses it at the end of his bed. Without a care in the world about me seeing him in his underpants, he takes off his pajama pants and piles them on top of his shirt. For some reason, I don't think it's quite as inappropriate for him to be in his underwear around me as it is for me to be in mine around him. His underwear are a pair of shorts whilst mine are lacy and sexy and it's just not the same thing. "My old man gets more play than me…that's not funny." He climbs in his bed and shuts the lights off. I do the same. "He asked me for a condom the other day. I almost slapped him."

I start to laugh. "Yeah, that sucks." He turns off the TV since he has the remote. "But what ever happened to Mr. 'I-can-have-sex-whenever-I-want-to?" I fluff up my pillow. "Not the case anymore?"

"Not necessarily." He chuckles. "I could still get so much tail. I could've had sex about ten different times on this trip with eleven different women. Don't doubt my skills."

"Then why don't you?" I roll my eyes at him even though he can't see.

"…Just because I can doesn't mean I want to, Jo." His tone isn't playful anymore; he's serious. "I'm a grown up…I'm not gonna do it with someone that I don't care about and certainly not someone that's not my significant other." I smile softly. He's not such an asshole. He's really sweet for that. Most guys aren't like that. Most guys are gonna have sex with everything they can stick their pipes into. "Which is why I'm asking Stacy out. I'll bone her on the first date, wanna bet?" Of course, he has to let a bit of the douchebaggery slip in.

"…No. I don't want to bet." I feel like a pot of boiling water. I feel the anger seeping up out of nowhere and it's rising up and eventually it's going to boil over. I don't want to hear about her. I don't even want to hear her name, let alone about him wanting to boink her. "If you fuck her on your first date, I swear to god. You should at least know if the bitch has STDs or if she's got—"

"Whoa Jo, chill out. I was just joking, no need to do all of that. Put your claws away." He diffuses the situation before I gets way out of hand and I appreciate that because I was about to escalate. I don't want to even think about him with her. Look, I guess I'm jealous but whatever, I don't want to freaking hear about that. I'll snap out and go on a rampage in this hotel. How is he just going to almost kiss me and then go straight to talking about humping another female? Not that I want it to be me that he's talking about/considering humping, I'm just saying. I don't want to have sex with Alex, I'm quite content with the kisses and the stares and the caresses. But how disre-fucking-spectful of him to do that to me? I take a deep breath. I need to calm down. Maybe I have no business feeling like this when Alex really isn't even my property to begin with but still. I just…ugh. Just fuck Stacy. Seething, I flop down on my pillow, turn my back and settle in to go to sleep for the night. "…I won't ask Stacy out if you don't want me to." He whispers. I stay silent, still trying to cool down. I get so angry so fast and it's so hard for me to calm down. "Jo? d'ya hear me?" He tries again. "I didn't know it bothered you…"

"It _doesn't_ bother me. Can we just drop it?" I mumble. "Goodnight."

"You wanna sleep over here?" He's offering me an olive branch.

"Can't. Lyla'll wake up and see." I stare at the wall. I want to sleep with him so badly. I want to go over there, crawl in the bed with him and have the exact same sleep I had last night. Even though he pissed me off to no extent, I still want to sleep with him.

"…I'll set an alarm to wake me up at 8:30. She shouldn't be up before then. I'll get up, go get in the bed with her and that'll be that. If you want me to, that is." He clears his throat. "Do you want me to?"

"…Yeah."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Alex?" She whispers my name in the darkness, finally breaking the silence between us. We both understand that the other isn't necessarily asleep, we're just being quiet and enjoying the moment. I know she's not asleep by the way I can feel her eyelashes tickling my chest every time she blinks. Tonight's position is only slightly different from last night's. She's lying smack in the middle of my chest tonight and her arms aren't around my waist. One of her arms is up underneath of my back and the other one is draped across my chest just like her leg is draped across my waist. We've been laying like this for no longer than ten minutes and for the entire ten minutes, we've been silent. She climbed in the bed with me, got comfortable and hasn't said one word until a second ago. I'm busy playing with my hair and listening to her breathing. There's a piece of me that wants to lie her down flat in the bed and just…rub her. Not sexually, in a more caressing kind of way. She told me at the park earlier that her body doesn't hurt but I find that really hard to believe. She suffered a broken pelvis. Those things take a while to heal and even when they do heal, the pain is excruciating at times. I've dealt with broken pelvises before. It's arguably the most painful thing that can happen to a person. And she's walking around Disney World like she's okay? I know she's not. "Alex?"

"Huh?" I trace my fingers along her shoulders. Her legs feel like silk against mine. In fact, every inch of her skin is soft. She asked me if I'm happy earlier at the park and I didn't know how to respond at that moment in time. If I had to respond now, the answer would be yes. Yes, I'm happy. I've got a sexy woman in my arms, I'm on vacation with her and my daughter…what's there not to be happy about? I can't stop stroking my fingers along her velvety skin. Don't get me wrong, I loved my wife to death. I loved Jenna with everything in me, every ounce of my being. But when I touch Jo, it's a feeling I never had, even with Jenna. Touching Jo is like touching a flower, soft and delicate but so sweet. Something about this woman is special. I know this, because I don't think about sex with her. I don't think about throwing her legs over my shoulders. I think about this right here…holding her and caressing her and letting her know that she's something to me. And if I were to have sex with her, I wouldn't have sex with her. I'd make sweet, sweet love to her. I don't desire Jo like I desire other women though. I don't picture her naked, I don't dream of hearing her moan my name. I picture her in my arms, I picture her on my chest and I dream of hearing her laugh. She's so very different.

"…Just making sure you're still awake." She whispers. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Shh." She puts her finger to my lips. I pucker my lips and kiss it. "That…" It's silent in the room again so I listen for whatever she wants me to listen for. I hear it and I immediately wish I hadn't. It's faint, but it's there. It's light tapping against the wall. I suck my teeth and she starts to laugh. I really could've lived my entire life without hearing my dad bang a chick I work with. I really could've died without hearing this I would be perfectly fine. I roll my eyes and shake my head. "I told you we should go to bed before it starts…" There is a bright side to hearing my dad banging his girlfriend though…a silver lining. A small one. Very small. My dad screwing Nurse Michelle could give me a little bit of hope. I mean, he's clearly over my mom now, right? And if my dad can get over my mom when he was so deeply in love with her and desperately wanted her back, maybe I could get over Jenna.

That's some mad, mad hope though.


	27. Not Yet

"Here, Ly…more bread." I scoop some bright red marinara sauce up on one of the cheesy breadsticks from the basket in the middle of the table and hold it in front of her face. She's sucking a little bit of Mountain Dew from her straw and completely ignoring me. It's her birthday, so I'm letting her eat and do whatever she wants, hence the reason she's sucking down her second cup of Mountain Dew. They're kiddie cups that she's drinking out of, so two kiddie cups is like her drinking a full grown up cup but still, I wish she had chosen apple juice instead. When we went to the counter to order our food, she started to ask for apple juice because when I was telling her all the options, I left out the fact that they even offer Mountain Dew. But she saw the logo on the soda machine and she wanted that and I already told her back at the hotel that today is her special day and she can have whatever she wants. So when she asked for Mountain Dew, I let her have it. I'm putting my foot down with her eating though. If it was up to her, she would've stopped after eating less than half of her macaroni and a slice of me and Jo's pizza. I refuse to let her walk around with only that in her belly though. She needs to eat. "More bread, Lyla." She spits the straw out and takes a bite of the breadstick for me. "Good girl."

Lyla sure picked an interesting place to eat. We just got off of the Dinosaur ride and she wanted to get something to eat. It was around lunch time when we got off of that ride so it was decently lunch time and we were fine to get something to eat. In truth, I think Lyla just said she wanted to come eat because that Dinosaur ride really shook her up and she needed a minute to regroup. That ride was a little intense for little kids and halfway through it, I looked at Jo and she basically agreed that we shouldn't have brought her on it. The ride was prehistoric themed and it was designed to be spooky. The carts were made into Jeep explorers and the point of the ride was for us to "rescue" a dinosaur before the meteor that wiped out the entire dinosaur population killed him. In the beginning, it was all fine and dandy. Dinosaurs were poking out from the walls and roaring and Lyla got a kick out of it. But as soon as we turned this one corner, fake meteors started shooting out and mean dinosaurs were coming out of nowhere as opposed to the friendly one we were supposed to rescue and by that time, she was in tears. She had her face buried in Jo's side and she was bawling. The whole time, Jo was trying to talk her down and tell her that it was just a ride and the dinosaurs were fake and the meteors were fake but Lyla was UPSET. We shouldn't have brought her on that ride. We saw that she was tall enough to get on it and we figured that Disney World is a children's park so the ride was going to be cool. We were so wrong.

Anyway, she picked a neat place to eat. It's called Pizzafari and it's an Italian restaurant. I think the only reason she picked it is because she saw the chairs outside and they were shaped like blue butterflies. She had a kids' meal of macaroni and cheese and she ate some of me and Jo's pizza. We ordered a meat lover's pizza for the table and we both got a side of salad and breadsticks. We're almost done eating here and I think when we're done, we're gonna walk around and see what other rides we can take her on to make up for the Dinosaur one. We left DinoLand U.S.A. after the disaster on the ride and now we're in a place called Discovery Island so it should be better. I don't think Lyla likes dinosaurs much anymore. The animal exhibits don't open up until around 2:30 so we still have a little bit longer before we can go see the animals and that's all Lyla really wants to do. She wants to go see the animals so badly.

"Are you done?" I pick up a napkin and lean across the table to wipe her mouth off. She nods her head and licks her lips before she lets me wipe her face off. For the most part, Jo's been pretty quiet today and I don't know why. I don't know if she's tired or if she's in a bad mood but I haven't questioned her about it. She'll speak when I talk to her and she doesn't really seem like she's in a bad mood; she's just been really quiet. "Do you have to use the potty?" Thanks to Jo though, I've been asking Lyla if she has to use the potty every so often. She's doing well with it, I think. Sometimes, she'll just tap me or tap Jo and tell us that she has to go and other times, she'll just go on herself. She gets the point of putting her pee in the potty, she's just very inconsistent with it. I owe Jo though because I would've never even thought to introduce her to the potty while we're here. I probably would've put it off and put it off. She kick-started it for me, that's for damn sure. "No potty?" She shakes her head. "Well let me or Jojo know when you have to go, okay?" She nods and I turn to Jo, who's sitting across the table from me and next to Lyla. "You ready?" She stirs her straw around in her glass of iced tea and nods her head. "Alright then, come on." I start sliding out of the booth I'm sitting in and Jo slips out of hers. She helps Lyla out of the booth as well. "You wanna see what other rides we can go get on?"

"No scawy rides, daddy." She starts walking towards the door in front of me and Jo but she knows when she gets to the door that she'd better stop. She's been doing well with being here. At times, her excitement will get the best of her and she'll wander away from me but generally, she knows her limits and she knows that she'll be in deep trouble with me if she goes too far. I hold the door open for both she and Jo and they walk out of it together. "Daddy?" She looks up at me very briefly before looking back down at the ground. She's playing some sort of game with herself since the ground we're currently walking on is made of colorful tiles. She's skipping every other color and only stepping on the pink tiles. "Daddy? 'acause it's my birfday, does that mean I get to um…stay up until…" She looks up at me again. "Firteen a clock?"

I chuckle. "Yeah, sure. You can stay up until 13:00 if you want to." I smooth some of her hair back since it was sticking up and let her continue with her game. Lyla and I both know that there's no possible way in hell she's going to stay up past 10:00 tonight, let alone 13:00. But if letting her stay up until "13:00" will make her happy, who am I to tell her no on her birthday? I might sound like an idiot or whatever, but I swear I can see a change in her from yesterday. She won't officially be four until 6:38 this evening but I swear she doesn't look like my three year old anymore. I always get kind of emotional on Lyla's birthdays and this one is no different. I was a mess on her first birthday though. We didn't do much on her first birthday, we just had a small get together at the house for my parents, a few of Jenna's friends and that was the extent of it. We had a Blues Clues cake and Lyla ate some of that and that was it. I was a mess though, emotionally. I'm not doing so hot today either but I'm holding it together so I don't embarrass myself in front of Jo. "Are you having a good birthday so far?"

"Yep." She nods her head and stops walking all of a sudden? "When I see Pappy, daddy? Where him go?" My dad and Michelle had breakfast with us at the hotel this morning but they're not coming to the park until later. They want to spend a couple hours on the beach, he said. It doesn't make much sense to me why they would come here just to spend time on the beach when we have a beach back up in Millerton that they could've easily hung out on, but I'm beginning to think that my dad's "beach" excuse was just a cover up so him and Michelle could go at it like rabbits again. They had sex _all_ night last night and I do mean _all_ night. Jo and I had to eventually tune them out. They started around 10:00 or so, Jo and I went to bed around 11:30 and they were still going at it around that time. Eventually, the headboard stopped banging on the wall but what came after that was even worse. Again, I could've lived my entire life without hearing my dad have sex with someone I work with, but I could've also lived my entire life without hearing nurse Michelle scream. Needless to say, breakfast was so awkward this morning. I didn't say anything to my dad about it because I didn't want to embarrass either one of them, but it was so awkward for me to sit there and look at nurse Michelle, knowing she was screwing my dad last night. I guess my Pop's entitled to his own life.

"Pappy's coming a little later. He'll be here for us to take that boat ride and see the lions." I bend down and pick her up because we move through the park faster if I carry her and it's starting to get unbearably hot out here. It's supposed to be 90 degrees today but I swear it feels hotter. "We're gonna eat cake and ice cream later and Pappy and Michelle will eat ice cream and cake with us. Okay?" She's looking down at the ground while I'm carrying her but she nods her head anyway. I sneak a peek over at Jo just to make sure she's doing okay. We've been at the park since 10:00 this morning and she's already got a tan. It's a pretty tan too. Some girls get all red and gross looking when they get tans but not Jo. Her tan made her skin a real pretty golden color and she straightened her hair this morning before breakfast so she looks kind of different. I've only seen Jo with straight hair like twice and it throws me off when it's straightened at times because I always forget how long it is when it's shriveled up and wavy. Did I mention how pretty she looks in yellow? Because she does. She's wearing a yellow Polo shirt with the collar neatly folded down and a pair of cloth white shorts. Her shoes are yellow too, which I think is a really nice touch. They're a pair of yellow Converse sneakers and she looks really pretty in yellow. I think the yellow makes her skin look more tan than it really is. "Jo?" I call her name to get her attention. She turns her head. "You okay? Been kinda quiet over there…"

"I'm alright." She shakes her head and takes a deep breath. "I think I see a ride over that way." It's almost like all she needed was for me to spark up the conversation for her to talk. "You wanna take her on it?" She points over to where she saw the ride. Lyla lets go of me and leans over towards where Jo is standing with her arms out. Jo seems reluctant at first but she takes her and that's when it dawns on me, what's wrong with her. She's either uncomfortable or she's in pain, it's one of the two. The discomfort flashed across her face very briefly when Lyla made it clear that she wants her to carry her but it went away soon after she made the decision to take her. She's aching and she doesn't want me to know it. I don't feel right letting her carry Lyla knowing she's in pain but I think I know Jo by now and I know that she won't admit that she's in pain and if I try to take Lyla back, she probably won't let me. "It's called…" She cranes her neck around to look. "Kali River Rapids… it sounds okay."

"Yeah, go 'head." I give my consent and as soon as I do, she scoots Lyla up on her hip so she doesn't drop her and starts walking towards the queue line. I follow the both of them as Jo slips through the Fast-Pass line. The queue line for this ride is Asian-themed and all the poles are made of some kind of wood that looks like bamboo. We're underneath a pavilion and it's really humid in here. At first I think that it's humid because it's hot as hell out here today, but as I look around under the pavilion we're standing under, I can see that it's meant to be humid in here because it's supposed to look like a rainforest. Since Jo's in front, she opens up a door that leads into another part and I really hope that this is actually a ride and not something that we have to walk around in because it's hot as heck and I might die if I have to walk in this kind of heat. It smells really musty in this building and again, it's a rainforest…more like a rainforest than that pavilion. There are trees all around, we're walking up a stone pathway and there's animal noises playing from speakers. It really seems like an actual forest. "I really hope this isn't something we have to walk through."

"Who are you telling?" Jo mumbles and turns another corner. This whole entire building is part of the queue and I find that ridiculous. It becomes clear that this building is a queue, because as soon as we turn that corner, there's a line of people standing between metal bars. "That mist feels kind of good though. It's enough to cool you off but not enough to drench you. I like it." She's referring to the very light mist-like water that's spraying from geysers all around the rainforest. She stands behind the last person in line and leans against the metal bars with Lyla still on her hip. "I hope this ride is something fast so maybe we can get some wind. I'm hot as hell." She puts her hand on Lyla's forehead. "Are you hot too, Lyla?" Lyla nods her head and starts wiggling so Jo puts her down. Lyla stands in front of Jo and rests her head back, against Jo's lower stomach. Jo starts combing through Lyla's hair with her fingers, trying to keep it away from her forehead and keep her cool. Ever since I came home from work that one day and saw Jo holding my daughter while she slept, I had the feeling that she really had a special place for her. It's rather apparent that Jo cares about my daughter a lot and it'd be harder to believe if she didn't. She really does spend a lot of time with Lyla and there's undoubtedly a bond there. I already knew the answer when I asked Jo if she loved Lyla last night. To be honest, I'm glad she loves her. At this point, it's clear that Jo and I are something a little more than friends. I wouldn't call her my girlfriend just yet, but I think if we keep going at the rate we're going, we'll eventually get there. The fact that she adores my daughter and my daughter adores her is just an added bonus. It's one more thing I don't have to check off my list if and when Jo and I formally start to date. At least I won't have to break her and Lyla in together, like I would have to do with someone completely random, right? Because I'm fairly certain that Jo and I will start to date eventually, and that's always a big deal when someone you're dating has a kid, isn't it?

I take a step towards Jo and reach out to put my hands on her hips before I think that maybe, I shouldn't. I started to massage her hips but maybe I shouldn't. I mean, I don't know for sure if she's aching, I just think she is. I'm pretty sure though. But what if she's not? And I just touch her for no reason? Will she even care? I don't think she will. I wrap my hands around her waist anyway. I cup them around her hips and just rest them there. She jolts just slightly at the sudden contact but she rests again. I move my hands up and down gently, just in case she actually is aching. When it's clear that she doesn't mind me touching her, I move my hands down a little further and when I move them back up, I make sure I get them underneath her shirt. Her skin is so soft. It feels like buttermilk flowing along my fingertips, so smooth, soft and blemish-free. I move my hands up a little and trace her curves. I feel her skin get bumpy—goosebumps. She tilts her head back just slightly and I hear her breathing stutter for a second before she turns her head and looks at me. I should probably take my hands from underneath her shirt but I don't really want to. She looks at me with her jaw clenched. I raise my eyebrow. She moves her eyes down to Lyla then back at me. I shrug. She shakes her head softly and sighs. I take my hands from underneath her shirt like she asked me to.

Once Jo and I figure out what the hell our relationship actually is, I'll tell Lyla. I don't know how she'll react. She'll either be really happy about it or really pissed, there's not going to be an in between. She'll either be happy that it's Jo I'm after, since she likes Jo or she'll be pissed off, not giving a damn who it is. She doesn't want me to date anyone and she's made that clear on more than one occasion. I just need Jo and me to figure this out before I say anything to anyone, and that includes Lyla. Jo takes a ponytail holder off of her wrist and ties Lyla's hair up with it instead of putting her own hair up. "Keep your hair up, honey…it's too hot for you to have it down." Lyla nods her head and turns around. I think she's starting to get nervous with the crowd of people in front of her because when she turns around, she rests her cheek on Jo's thigh and looks back towards me.

"…Lyla!" From behind us, somebody calls my daughter's name and I whip around to see. It didn't sound like my dad's voice and it didn't sound like Michelle's voice and those are the only people other than Jo and I that should know her name. Right behind us though, is the little friend she made yesterday at the pool. She's standing with her parents; a tall, lanky dark haired guy with glasses and a nerdy smile and a heavy-set woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. The little girl is just the same as she was yesterday, wearing her pink bathing suit and a pair of blue jean shorts now. She has big glasses and a little blonde ponytail. She's pretty cute with her glasses and stuff. "Hi Lyla!"

"Coey!" Lyla lets Jo's leg go and rushes back behind our place in line. They give each other a little hug and start talking away. "Daddy?" Lyla taps my leg. "Daddy, maybe Coey can come eat ice cweam and cake too? Huh? Maybe?"

It's already hard to say no to Lyla as it is, but it's even harder for me to say no on her birthday and when she's looking at me with those begging green eyes. "…Yeah." I nod my head. "As long as it's okay with Chloe's mommy and daddy, I don't mind." I look at both her parents. I met them yesterday so it's not really that awkward for me to talk to them. Their names are Janice and Larry, if I remember correctly. I met them yesterday at the pool when they told Chloe it was time to go eat dinner and Chloe asked if Lyla could have dinner with them. I had to say no though, because we already had dinner plans that were made for 7:00 down at the hotel's dining service. "It's her birthday and we're having cake and ice cream back at the hotel room…she's welcome to come up if it's okay with you guys."

"Do you want to have cake and ice cream with your friend, Chlo?" Her dad puts his hand on the little girl's shoulder and the little girl smiles and nods, like this is the greatest thing that's ever happened to her. "That's not a problem for us." The dad seems really goofy. He's kind of nerdy and he laughs funny.

"What time should we walk her up? And what room number?" The mother tilts her head and smiles at me like the dad did. I think their daughter has trouble making friends just like Lyla does, because Chloe seems really quiet and mild-mannered too, until she gets around Lyla. Lyla's the exact same way.

"What time are we doing cake and ice cream, Jo?" I turn to Jo. She's standing next to me but she wasn't really paying attention, she was too busy watching Lyla and Chloe interact. "Around 7?" As if she was listening the entire time, Jo nods. "Yeah, around 7:00…and it's room 203, across from the ice machine." I'm glad that Lyla made a friend. It's kind of upsetting that she won't see her again after we leave here, but still. At least she made one and maybe after making one, she won't be so shy from here on out. While I was talking to Chloe's parents yesterday, they informed me that Chloe is from Daytona Beach and that's a while away from Pensacola. That sucks. I would've liked it if she and Lyla could've remained friends after meeting here. "We should only be about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I'll walk her back down…what's your room number?"

"119." Her dad answers.

 **X X X**

"…I'll catch you two at the end." Jo takes one look at the ride and shakes her head. Neither one of us were expecting THIS to be the ride, but it is and I think it looks like fun. I guess if we had paid more attention to the name of the ride, we could've guessed but we didn't. It's a water ride; whitewater rafting to be specific. Jo starts walking towards the exit and I grab her arm. "Alex, if you don't get off of me." She looks at me with all seriousness. "I'm not getting on this. I'm not getting wet today. I just straightened my hair last night and I really don't feel like walking around the park for the rest of the day soaking wet. I'm not getting on this. I'll catch you two at the end of the ride. You can find me on a bench somewhere." I pull her towards me. We're next to get on. "Alex, get! I'm not getting on this! I'm not getting wet." She snatches away. "I don't do water rides." I nudge Lyla because we already discussed this and we have a plan. As we started getting closer to getting on the ride, Jo already told us that she wasn't getting on it if it was a water ride. Me and Lyla came up with a plan though. She's gonna beg Jo to get on and Jo's not gonna be able to say no to her and eventually, she's gonna give in and get on it. I don't think Lyla caught my drift, so I nudge her again.

"….Pease Doedoe?" She kicks the cuteness into gear. She folds her hands and pokes her lip out. "Pease? It my birfday…and I weally, weally, WEALLY want you to get on wiff me. Pease Doedoe!" She wraps her arms around Jo's leg and squeezes her. She looks up at her with the puppy dog eyes and everything. "It would…make me weally happy." I smirk. That's my girl. Just like I told her to.

"…You're low." Jo shoots me a look and shakes her head at me. "You're low…getting a four year old to do your dirty work." She rolls her eyes at me and looks down at Lyla who's still gazing at her with the eyes. "…Fine." She sighs and stomps her foot. "But if I don't have to get wet, I'm not going to."

"Thank you Doedoe." Lyla kisses Jo's kneecap and lets her go. She turns back to me and holds her hand out. "Now pay up, dada." I chuckle and reach in my pocket and hand her five bucks.

"You paid her?!" Jo's jaw drops. "You are sick!"

"Come on, Jo." I wink at her and since the next raft is available, it's time for us to get in it. I help Lyla down a small flight of steps and help her into the raft. Jo's reluctantly following. She sits down in one of the chairs and buckles her seatbelt with a sour look on her face. "Let daddy strap you in, Ly." I buckle Lyla's seatbelt and pull it tight. I then sit down in my own seat and buckle my own seatbelt. The ride attendant pushes a button that makes our belts ding to let her know that they're strapped properly. She gives another attendant a thumbs-up and the raft starts moving. Jo is just shaking her head. She really doesn't want to be on here. The raft goes down a hill, which splashes some water up and it hits Jo in her back. She gasps and her jaw drops.

"…I hate you." She rolls her eyes.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I untie the drawstrings on my soaking wet white shorts and pull them down. I got drenched on that goddamn ride and they wonder why I didn't want to get on it in the first freaking place. All my hard work of straightening my hair just went down the drain. I walked around that motherfreaking park for two hours after, soaking wet. It's official. I hate Alex. I pull my shirt over my head too and hang it up on the doorknob so it'll dry. I hang my pants up on the doorknob too. Not long after we got off that raft ride, Alex's dad and his girlfriend called to tell him that they were in the Animal Kingdom and they wanted to know where we were. We met up with them and we took Lyla to see the animals. You would've thought she died and went to heaven with the animals. She went crazy over the elephants but when she saw the lions, she merely cried over how excited she was. Then we took her to the aquarium and she went crazy over the "Nemos" and the "Dorys". When we were done, his dad asked if he and his girlfriend could take Lyla for a few hours, on the boat ride and to see the Lion King play that they show in the Lion King Amphitheater. At first, Alex said no but eventually, he gave in. I don't think I was supposed to see the look his dad gave him but I did…and Alex pulled his dad aside and had a talk with him about how "me and Jo are just friends, pop". Alex's dad and his girlfriend try so hard to get me and Alex to spend alone time together…I think they're trying to force us together. They don't have to, but I wish they'd stop forcing it. Alex and I do enough on our own.

When we were alone, we got on a rollercoaster that Lyla would've been too small for. It was a really cool one too. It was called Expedition Everest and it was all set up to look like a mountain with the Abominable Snowman. It went backwards because the tracks were supposed to look like they were broken. It was really neat and kind of scary when it went backwards, but it was good because I was with Alex. After the rollercoaster, Alex called his dad and told him that we were going back to the hotel because low and behold, Alex was tired of walking around wet too. His dad and his girlfriend are just going to bring Lyla back with them. "Alex?" I wrap a towel around my body and walk to the bathroom door. I let him have the shower first because I'm going to take longer than he is. I think he's done though, because the water stopped running. I knock on the door. "Alex? Can you hand me the blow dryer?" I want to dry my bra before I get in the shower. I only brought one and if it's soaking wet, I'll have to walk around without a bra and I can't do that. "Alex." I put my hand on the knob.

"Yeah, hold on." He says from behind the door. It opens and he pokes his head out. "What'd you want?" I can't concentrate all of a sudden. Only his head is poking out but my eyes are wandering. What's below that head? His arm is bare…so is his chest…he's naked. What did I want? "You said blow dryer?"

"Y-yeah." I nod my head. He leaves the door open a little bit and turns away to grab the blow dryer. I catch a glimpse of below his waist but only a glimpse. I can't really see much. I can see his chest…it's beautiful. He looks like he was handcrafted by the gods or something. I've laid on that chest twice but I never really looked at it. I never looked at his abs and how perfect they are. And his arms…arms are a huge turn on for me, especially if they're muscular and his are. And his line…god, his line. I don't know exactly what that line is called, but it's so sexy. You know, the V-shaped line that leads down to a man's junk? Ugh. He hands me the blow dryer. "…Thank you." I take it off of him. "A-are you…are you done? Because I'd like to sh-shower." I can't stop mindlessly babbling. So many thoughts are running through my head though, and none of them are pure. "Not rushing though…take your time."

"Yeah, I'm done. Here." He opens the door all the way and my eyes widen. But he's got a towel wrapped around his waist anyway. No wonder I couldn't actually see his junk because believe me, I tried. I shake my head to clear my thoughts and turn around to go back to the bedroom. I have to set the blow dryer up to dry my bra before I get in the shower. He follows me to the bedroom. "Are you hungry?" He asks. "We can order something from room service if you want."

"No, I'm fine." I turn the blow dryer on and lay it down on its side. I position my bra in front of it so it can dry and turn back around, only to find that he's adjusting his towel before he sits down on the bed. "That doesn't mean you can't order though. You can." I catch him looking at me, but it's not sexual. "Alex, stop looking at me like that. I told you that I'm FINE." He tried to caress my hips earlier and when I asked about it as we were waiting to get on the rollercoaster, he said it was because I was walking like I was hurt and he was trying to alleviate my pain. I told him not to and he gave me the whole "I'm a doctor, I know how to deal with this" speech. But ever since I told him not to touch me, he looks at me like he's expecting me to crumble on the floor and die of pain. "I'm fine. I've been dealing for seven months. It really doesn't even hurt that bad today. So you can stop worrying. I'm fine."

"…Come here, Jo." He motions with his finger for me to go over to him and I roll my eyes but I go. "You're not okay and I know you're not. But…If you need a break or you don't feel like walking, just let me know." He holds my hands. "I know you're not okay. There's no way you shattered every bone in your pelvis and you're okay to walk as much as you've been. I'm not stupid and I actually went to medical school. I know you're not okay." I purse my lips together. "So don't lie to me, okay?" I shrug my shoulders, careful not to knock my towel down. I sigh and pull away so I can go take my shower now. "Wait a minute, I'm not done." He grabs my hands again and pulls me back. He lets my hands go and puts his on my waist like he did at the park. He digs his thumbs into my hips and at first, that hurts like hell but as he starts massaging, it actually feels good. I can tell that he's having a hard time gripping through the towel though. So even though I really don't think I should, I lift my towel up anyway. I never took off my underwear so at least they're still on. I have no bra on though, so I keep my towel around my chest. Once my towel is lifted up, he wraps his hands around my waist again and continues with the massaging. He has strong, muscly hands but they're so gentle with me. He's not even flinching for the fact that I'm standing in front of him in a pair of black, lace underwear. They're boyshort underwear so they look like mini shorts but they're my underwear. He moves to my lower back and digs his fingertips in, which makes me wrinkle my brow and whisper "ouch" to myself. That hurts. "…I'm hurting you?" I shake my head. It hurts but god damn, it feels good.

He pulls me a little closer to his body and massages my lower back in circles. "…Alex." I bite my lip to bear with the pain. "Not so hard there…that hurts." Nobody's ever rubbed my body like this, except for my mom and I basically made her stop. She was trying to rub me like two weeks after the accident and she just downright hurt. I could've slapped her, she was hurting me so bad. He really does know what he's doing. I should shower though. "…Thank you." I whisper and try stepping back. He keeps his hands on my back and refuses to let me move though. "I need to go shower." I speak up this time. "Thank you so much but I really need to shower."

"You can wait a minute." He continues massaging my back. I close my eyes and as soon as I do, his massaging stops. I open them up and find that his face is near my stomach. He slips his hands up my towel a little further and kisses my stomach like he'd kiss me on my mouth, deeply with some tongue involved. He tilts his head to the side and kisses my hip, swirls his tongue around my bellybutton and kisses my other hip. I've never had someone use this much care with me. Oh my god. He leaves a trail of kisses from my bellybutton to my underwear line. His hands are stroking along my back as he's kissing all over my stomach and my hips. My heart is beating so fast, so, so fast. Oh my god. I put my hands against his head as a sign of appreciation and tilt my head back as he runs his hands all along my back and kisses all around my bellybutton. He drags his lips from the bottom of my bellybutton all the way down to the waistband of my underwear. His hands stop at my lower back and he pulls my body closer to his mouth. He moves his face down and kisses the outside of me through my underwear. I feel my spine tingle as I get goosebumps from the back of my neck all the way to the tips of my toes. "So I was thinking…" He whispers between kisses on my vagina and my thighs. He rests his forehead on my stomach and gives me a soft kiss on my navel again. He stands up and tilts his head so I know what he wants and I want it too. I tilt my head to the opposite side and our lips finally meet. We still don't use tongue though. He kisses me hard, like he has a point to prove by doing it. He pulls away for a second. "I was gonna tell Lyla about us…" He leans back in to kiss me again but I put my finger up to his lip.

"…What about us?" I stop him and look him in his eyes. "What do you mean?" He looks at me and I know what this look is. "Don't, Alex. Don't…tell her." I shake my head. He's gonna tell his daughter that we're dating when we're not really…dating? "Not right now…"

"Then when, Jo?" He has his hands on my shoulders. "When? When she catches us sleeping together? When she sees me holding your hand? How do you really want her to find out, Jo?"

I shake my head again. "We're not serious…" I whisper. Telling Lyla at the moment would be terrible. We've only been flirting and kissing for two days. I'm not expert, but this is way too soon. He just lost his wife and I just lost my husband and it's way, way too soon to start putting labels on our relationship. I mean sure, it's more than just a friendship. It _is_ a friendship. He is and always will be my very best friend, but it's more than a friendship. I'm aware of that. I'm aware of the fact that we're not just friends. But we're not dating. He's not my boyfriend and I'm not his girlfriend. He's someone that I'm still getting to know, someone that I'm not sure of what I want to be with yet. I don't know what I want to be with Alex just yet and I won't know at least for another week or so. I don't know if I'd rather be his friend or if I want to be his girlfriend, I don't know. It's just too soon, it's too fast and he doesn't need to do something so drastic as telling Lyla about this just yet. We don't know what we are. If we were something serious enough to tell someone as important as LYLA, I shouldn't still deem it inappropriate for him to see me naked, I still shouldn't be unsure every time I kiss him and it shouldn't feel forbidden for me to sleep in his bed. If I genuinely felt as if Alex and I were doing nothing wrong, I wouldn't feel guilty every time he touches me and he wouldn't have to set alarms so he can get out of bed with me. He can't tell Lyla. Not yet. "We're not…" I shake my head again. "And I'm so confused…"

"We're not what, Jo?" He lifts his head up and looks at me with sad eyes. "We're not what? Boyfriend and girlfriend?" I bite my lip. "I know that."

"I just don't know what I want us to be yet…" I admit.

"Well I don't have time for you to figure it out." He sighs. "But okay, I won't tell her."


	28. Respect

I open the small package of candles that my dad bought down at the hotel's gift shop and start positioning them around her name. Stupid me, forgot to buy candles and my dad had to buy $15.00 Disney-themed ones down at the gift shop. The candles are nice, don't get me wrong; but I so could've gotten ones from the dollar store and Lyla would've been just as happy with them as she is with these ones. I stick a Mickey Mouse shaped candle right above the L, a Minnie Mouse one above the Y, a Donald Duck one above the other L and a Daisy Duck one above the last letter, the letter A. The kitchen did a nice job on the cake. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting the cake to be like. I _was_ expecting something nice since the cake cost me 35 bucks but I wasn't expecting it to be this nice for only 35 dollars. It's a two-layered, circular sheet cake and I got her favorite; strawberry cake with vanilla icing. The frosting on the cake is a bright pink color and around the perimeter of the cake are little yellow fondant star cutouts. In purple frosting, "Happy 4Th Birthday Lyla" is written on the top and there's a miniature pair of pink, purple and lime green Mickey Mouse ears as the cake topper. I pick up the lighter and ignite the flame on it so I can light the candles. I light them one by one and grab the cake by its black plastic container so I can bring it over to the table that's next to the desk in our room.

I only asked my dad to buy candles but of course, he had to go all out and buy more than what I asked for. He bought party hats and streamers in addition to the candles. I didn't really want to decorate the hotel room. I just wanted to keep this nice and simple; cake, ice cream, presents, the end. I just wanted her birthday to be an intimate get together. When my dad brought the streamers and the hats into the room, I initially told him to take them back since Lyla was down in the arcade with Michelle and hadn't seen them yet. If she had saw the streamers and the hats, she would've been all over them and if he took them away after she saw them, it would've undoubtedly been an argument. Luckily though, she wasn't in the room when he brought them and he could've taken them back. Jo, however, wouldn't let him. She was all over the streamers, hanging them up and stringing them from the ceiling. As much as I didn't want the streamers and the hats, I have to admit that they were a nice touch and they made Lyla even more excited when she walked through the hotel room door and saw how she decorated the place. She immediately ran over to me, gave me a hug and said, "Thank you, daddy!" I started to tell her that she needed to thank Jo for decorating the room and not me but Jo shook her head and told me not to.

I've been trying to put what happened between Jo and I earlier out of my mind for the sake of having fun at Lyla's little birthday function but when she does things like decorate a hotel room for my daughter and then deny praise for it, it's kind of hard not to think about stuff like that. I'm not necessarily feeling like she rejected me but I'm not feeling like she accepted me either. I didn't mean to kiss her like that. When she walked over to me, my only intention was to massage her. I knew she was hurting; I saw it on her face all day and she was walking like it hurt so I just wanted to take some of her pain away. That was the only thing I intended to do. But she was standing in front of me in her underwear while I was sitting down on that bed and I thought that her body was beautiful. The way my fingers glided across her silky skin and the way my lips felt her skin quivering underneath of them was just magical. She's really thin but she has amazing curves. Her body bellows outward just like an hourglass and gives way to wide, sexy hips. She looks sexy in black too. Her underwear were black and so tight. She has a beautiful body, how was I supposed to resist that? I got a little carried away though. My lips just roamed her body and I let them have their own mind and they just so happened to go to her core. I'd do it again and again and again.

I admit that she's right. We probably shouldn't tell Lyla yet, not until we figure out what exactly we are and what we want to be. I'm on the same page as Jo, believe it or not. I'm not exactly sure what we are and what we're going to be either. Being with Jo is natural…I don't have to think about anything. Everything comes naturally with Jo. I don't have to think what my next move is going to be, I don't have to think about when I'm going to kiss her. It just happens and when it happens, it feels like it's always meant to be. The aftermath is never awkward and it's just…it's right. But I don't know if I want to be her boyfriend. I _do_ know that I want to be more than just her friend but I don't know if I'm ready. I think honestly, where we're at right now is a perfect place. It's a happy medium and a place where we can just float. I'm okay with kissing her sometimes, I'm okay with staring at her every so often. The only thing I'm not okay with is how I have to set a damn alarm because I don't want Lyla to catch us. I don't want to have to sneak and that's the only reason I considered telling Lyla. I don't think Jo got that though and we don't have time to talk about it. I think eventually we will talk about exactly what I meant but not right now. She ran off and took a shower after we had that conversation and when she got out, we just didn't talk about it anymore.

I put the cake down in the middle of the table and dim the lights in the hotel room so we can sing to her. Lyla's sitting in a chair next to her little friend and she's staring at her cake like either she can't wait to eat it or she's amazed by what it looks like. Her pretty green eyes are sparkling from the flames of the candles and her lips are parted like she's in awe. My dad is standing behind her, holding his phone up so he can record us singing like he's done for three birthdays prior. Michelle is standing beside my dad and she's admiring the cake as well. Jo's sitting across from Lyla and she's just patiently waiting with a goofy pink party hat on her head and little Chloe is sitting next to Lyla looking at the cake too. I clear my throat and start it off. "Happy birthday to you…" Everyone else follows in my lead and starts singing as well and once I'm sure that nobody will notice that I'm not singing, I stop. Seeing my beautiful little girl sitting in her chair and watching her candles burn while we're singing to her…it's way too much. Where Michelle's standing? That's where Jenna would and _should_ be standing. Or maybe Lyla would be on her lap, that's where she always liked to sit. And Jenna would give her a kiss for every candle she blew out. It was their own special thing. It's her first birthday without her mother. I know Jenna would've loved to be here too. She would've done all the princess things with Lyla. It's not fair that she has to turn four without her mother. This just isn't right. She was here last year. She had a scarf on her head to hide her chemo hair, but she was there. She was there and she was holding Lyla on her lap and this just isn't fair. This isn't fair.

"Blow out your candles, ladybug. Blow 'em out." My dad kneels down next to Lyla's chair and helps her to lean forward so she can reach the candles with her breath once they're done singing. I didn't even realize they had finished singing. "Make a wish first." He holds her around her waist so she doesn't fall face first into the cake. Lyla braces herself against the table with her hands and hovers over the cake. She looks so much like Jenna that it hurts. She has her eyes, her nose, her perfect pink lips and the way she's staring down at the candles right now… I clear my throat again and turn the lights on after Lyla blows out the candles and looks at me with the biggest smile on her face. I close my eyes for a moment and take a breath. Without a word, I turn around, stick my hands in my pockets and head for the door. "Alex, aren't you gonna…" Is the last thing I hear my dad say before I open the door and walk right out of it.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I jump when the door slams behind him and tilt my head. I wonder what's wrong. I hope it's not something I did or something I said. I mean, he's been kind of screwed up ever since I sort of rejected him earlier. I took a shower after I told him that I didn't think we should tell Lyla about us until we know what we want to be and when I got out, he wasn't in the room anymore. I thought he left because he was mad at me but when he came back, he had the cake and a gallon of Neapolitan ice cream and he started talking to me so it was kind of clear that he wasn't mad at me like I thought he was. We just didn't talk about what we had talked about when he was kissing all over me and stuff. We started fresh with a totally new conversation. I have noticed that he's been acting strange since our conversation though. I hope he doesn't feel like I rejected him because that's not the case. I would love nothing more than to be Alex's girlfriend, but not right now. Not in the midst of all this chaos; with him losing his wife and me losing my husband. I don't think either one of us are ready to jump into a committed relationship just yet. I mean sure, I'm willing to date him and see how far we're willing to take all of this. I'm willing to go on a few dates with him once we get home and get to know him better before we give our relationship labels. I didn't reject him, I just told him not yet. I really hope he doesn't think I was rejecting him and I really hope I have nothing to do with the reason he just walked out in the middle of cake and ice cream.

I reach up and take my party hat off of my head. "Mr…Um…" I've never formally been introduced to Alex's dad. We met a few times before this trip and Alex did introduce us but when he did, he always referred to him as his dad and nothing else. I don't know the man's name. "Alex's dad." I just blurt that out so I have something to call him.

He chuckles and looks my way. "Jimmy, darlin'." Finally, I know his name.

I nod my head. "Sorry, I just…" I bite my lip. I have to do this fast before he gets too far, I lose him and I have to end up looking for him. "Can you? Cake and ice cream?" I put my party hat down on the table and scoot out from my chair, glancing at Lyla. She seems relatively unaffected by the fact that her dad just walked out. She's too interested in eating some of her cake and that's probably for the best. She and her little friend have been in their own little world ever since her friend got to our hotel room. They were jumping on the bed and just having a good time playing together. "I'll be right back. I'm gonna try and see what's wrong with him."

"Take your time, hon. Missy and I can hold down the fort here." He winks at me and picks up a knife to cut the cake. "Sometimes Alex just needs a break. He's been this way for years."

"Mhm." I give him a weak half-smile, nod and rush towards the door. I pull it open and shut it behind myself. I look down both ends of the hallway until I see him. He's walking towards the private balcony pretty slowly. His shoulders are slouched, his feet are dragging and his head is down. He has very poor body language so something is really wrong with him. I run my hand through my messy hair and follow him. He doesn't realize I'm following him. I don't rush to catch up to him either. I just walk at my normal pace and he ends up getting out of the door about a minute or two before I even make it to the door. I look out of the glass door before I open it up and go out onto the balcony though. He's sitting in one of the plastic chairs with his elbows resting on his knees and his forehead resting in the palms of his hands. If I'm the reason he's so upset, I'll never forgive myself. He just needs to let me explain though. He has to understand that I wasn't rejecting him. It wasn't a "no", it was simply a "not right now." I run over my apology a couple times in my head before I finally muster up enough courage to open the sliding glass door and step out onto the balcony with him.

At the sound of the door opening, he turns around and looks to see who it is that's joining him. Once he sees that it's just me, he goes right back to his position with his head in his hands. His eyes are all red-rimmed, his face is bloodshot and he looks like he's causing himself physical pain by holding back tears. "Hey." He mumbles into his hands, sniffs, digs his palms into his eyes and takes them away from his face. "Shouldn't you be inside handling cake and ice cream duties?" He refuses to look at me but at least he's talking to me, right? His head is down, staring at the brown bricks that make up the patio we're currently on. Without a word, I sit down in the chair next to him and fold my hands. I don't know where to start apologizing. I guess maybe I could start by telling him that what I said to him was NOT me rejecting him. "…I'll be fine, Jo. You can go back. I'm alright. I'll be back in a minute."

"You're fine?" I shift my position in the chair and turn towards him. He nods his head and I watch his shoulders slouch when he sighs. "Is that why you're sitting out here on a balcony while your daughter is inside enjoying her birthday party? Because you're fine?" He says nothing back to me when I pull that on him. He wipes underneath his nose with the side of his palm and sniffs. "What's the matter, Alex?" I guess maybe I could start by asking him what's wrong. That way, I can tackle one issue at a time and apologize for specifics. "Why'd you just walk out?"

"It's stupid." He mumbles.

"I'll still listen, no matter how stupid." I don't know if I should, but I reach over and grab ahold of his hand. He doesn't pull away so then again, maybe it's okay that I did. Since it's okay, I interlock our fingers and squeeze his hand. "Whatever it is, it can't possibly be that stupid. It was enough to make you walk out on Lyla's party…and I don't think you'd do that over something stupid." The two of us are speaking in a tone that is just barely above a whisper. I don't know why we're talking so softly but neither one of us dare to be the one to speak above our tone. It's almost as if the energy in the air won't allow us to talk louder. It's a solemn, sullen environment and talking loudly wouldn't reflect that. I reach across my body with my other arm and rest my hand against his forearm. I start stroking it with the tips of my fingers.

He keeps his head down but as a sign of life, he starts stroking my knuckles with his thumb of the hand that I'm holding. "…It's her first birthday without her mom, you know." So it has nothing to do with him thinking I rejected him? It's much deeper than that. Honestly, part of me thought it was. Part of me knew it had to be deeper than what happened between us earlier. Alex wouldn't just walk out on his daughter like that over something so miniscule. "Thought I'd be okay today…as long as she was. But…" He chuckles like something's funny but I know it's just out of nervousness. "I dunno, seeing her blow out the candles knowing that Jenna used to hold her so she could and just thinking that she'll never do that again." I see a tear trickle down his cheek and my stomach churns when I see that. Someone as big and strong as Alex crying is enough to freak anybody out. "She'll never get the chance to be held by her mother on her birthday again. And it's not like she'll remember the three birthdays when she did." He purses his lips. "I guess I'm just upset for her, you know? Jenna was so into her birthdays and…" His voice cracks and I stop breathing for a second. It's hard for me to hear about this so I can just imagine how hard it is for him to talk about. I pull myself together though. "She'll never get to spend a birthday with her mom again…how is that right, Jo? She's four…" He looks at me and his face is just…I can't even think straight.

His cheeks are ravaged with tears, his face is so red that it's scary and his eyes are puffy. I don't think I've ever seen a man cry this hard before and I could've never even envisioned this in my wildest dreams. He mumbles, "she's four" again under his breath before another round of sobs take over and I have to wipe my own tears. I wipe them, stand up and sit down on his lap so I can comfort him. I wrap my arms around his neck and force his head into my chest. He's bawling his eyes out so hard that he's making my body shake with his sobs. I rub the back of his head and force him to stay put. His arms are lazily hanging at his sides and he's trying to move his head but I won't let him. "It's okay…" I whisper very softly and knot my fingers through his fluffy hair. Slowly, he wraps his arms around my waist and accepts the fact that I'm holding him. "It's okay…" I keep rubbing his hair and start kissing the top of his head.

"It just sucks…" He whimpers.

"I know." I stroke the back of his neck and roll my eyes up to the sky as my own tears are falling. I think I'm crying because he is. Seeing Alex hurt the way he's hurting right now hurts me too. It stings to see him cry like this. I'm also crying for Lyla too. I understand completely what he's saying. He's hurting for his daughter and I'm hurting for the both of them.

"It shouldn't be this way." He shakes his head softly and snivels.

"I know." I say again. I rub my own cheeks against my shoulder to clear away the tears I'm crying.

"I hate this."

"I know." I plant a kiss on the crown of his head again. "It's okay though." I'm not even sure if anyone would be able to convince me that it's okay. If someone were trying to console me in this situation, I would be inconsolable. "I know it hurts right now, but it won't hurt forever. I promise it won't hurt forever." I start rubbing his head again. "She might not have her mom, but she has you…and she's lucky to have you. She's lucky to have such an amazing dad. You know, for some kids…their mother dying is a death wish. Some kids don't have fathers like you and she does. She's lucky to have you. She doesn't have her mommy anymore but she has her daddy and she needs you. She'll never stop needing you, Alex. She needs you even though it's hard. You're right, this isn't how it should be. It shouldn't be this way but it is…and she needs you."

He sniffs again. I think he calmed down but he won't take his head away from my chest for me to see. "I just…I should've known. I should've known and I should've done something and I should've…" He shakes his head. "But I didn't." He takes his head away from my chest and looks away from me. His face is still all red but he's not crying anymore. "I'm a freakin' doctor. I went to med school…did a bunch of rotations, passed all my tests on symptoms and diagnoses…I'm a doctor." His eyes well up with tears again and they spill over. "And I didn't know. I'm a doctor and I didn't catch my wife's cancer until it was stage four. Some doctor, right?"

"Oh Alex, you can't do that." I wrinkle my brow and shake my head. He's still looking away from me, so I put my hand underneath his chin and force him to look at me. "You can't do that. That's so unfair. You can't do that to yourself. Even the best doctors…" I don't know where I was going with what I was about to say so I just stop myself. "You can't blame yourself for that. Things happen. People get cancer, people die. People…" I sigh. "People drive drunk and hurt people." I shrug my shoulders. "…What happened to me?" I lift up the bottom of my shorts and show him my nasty scar. "That…that was my fault. I have every reason to blame myself for that. But what happened to you? What happened to your wife?" I shake my head. "You don't get to blame yourself for that. You don't get to blame yourself for being dealt a shitty hand. You blame life for that, you blame luck. Not yourself. You know how many doctors' wives die of cancer? Alex, if…if life was going to take Jenna, life was going to take her." He believes in God so maybe a God analogy will do him good. "God doesn't pay no mind to anything when he decides it's time to take someone's life and he certainly doesn't pay attention to the occupation of the victim's husband. What happened to Jenna wasn't your fault. You don't go blaming yourself for that."

"I still could've done something to help." He wipes his eyes again. "I think I'm starting to see where you're coming from with you not believing in God." He sniffs. "What kind of God could've wanted her? She didn't do anything to anybody. She didn't smoke, only drank on occasion, never touched drugs. She ran marathons, Jo." He smirks. "Tried to get me to run a couple with her." He sniffs again. "She was healthy…and God just decided to give her cancer? She did everything right…ate right, exercised…and she gets cancer?" I shrug and nod at the same time. My non-belief in God stems from a lot more than that, but I think he's getting on the right track here. He's starting to be in the same book as me but he's not necessarily on the same page or even in the same chapter when it comes to my hatred for religion. I hate religion so much for more reasons than just wanting to kick God in the balls for letting me live and killing my baby and my husband. It's deeper than that. I've tried to give religion a few different chances but it always ends up the same. Religion's the reason Mark's parents started hating me so much, the reason I never knew my maternal grandparents, the reason my mom and I were in a homeless shelter when I was six until I was eight, the reason my grandmother shut the door in my face when I was 17 years old and curious about her and inevitably, the reason that most of my childhood and a good portion of my marriage was so screwed up. "I don't quite think I believe in God anymore either."

There are some parts of my life that I'd like to keep private from Alex. I think he knows just about all he needs to really know about me. He doesn't need to know about my Jesus-worshipping grandparents refusing to give my mother and me a place to stay when she couldn't afford to keep a house over our heads. He doesn't need to know that they told my mom she could stay with them but I couldn't because I was a "bastard born out of wedlock". My mom refused to stay with them if I wasn't allowed, by the way. That's how we ended up in the shelter for two years until my mom got a stable job as a real teacher and not just a substitute. Alex doesn't need to know that Mark's parents hated my guts because they were church-going Christians and they felt like I corrupted their son with my atheist ways. And I certainly don't want him to know about the fact that my grandmother called me a bastard to my face, told me I was going to hell and slammed the door on me when I tried to give her tickets to my high school graduation ceremony. There are just some parts of my life that he doesn't need to know about and for that reason, I just shrug my shoulders and switch the subject before he even starts asking. "At least you have a piece of her, you know? You have a piece of Jenna with you…and you're wasting her birthday out here on a patio, Alex." I stroke his hair again. "She needs her daddy."

"I know…I just needed a minute." He fixes himself all up and taps my leg with loving tenderness. He was telling me to get up though, so I do. I stand up and fix myself as well. He stretches out, wipes his face again. "Thanks Jo." I nod my head to let him know that he's welcome and head for the door so we can go back inside to join the others for the party. Really, it's no big deal. He helped me out a lot when I cried in his arms over Mark. The least I could do is return the favor. I get that this day must be a pretty emotional day for him too. I'd be an emotional wreck too, if I were him. I slide open the door and wait for him to walk through it. Before he does though, he wraps his arms around me and squeezes me hard. "No seriously…thank you."

"Don't worry about it."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Here, daddy!" As soon as Jo and I walk back through the door, she bombards me with a little green plate with a slice of pink cake in the middle of it. "I saved this for you!" She says it like there's not still a whole half of cake still on the table. I take the plate off of her but put it down on top of the microwave by the door. I bend down and pick her up instead. I squeeze her pretty tight and she grunts. Talking to Jo out there on the balcony helped me a whole hell of a lot, I'll admit. She let me get it all out and I feel so much better. But talking to Jo also made me really miss Lyla and realize just how much I mean to her and how much she means to me. This little girl in my arms is the reason I keep going. She's my everything and I don't know what my life would be without her. Today's her first birthday without her mother and that's just motivation for me to be that much of a better dad. I kiss her cheek real hard and she flinches away from me. "Daaaddy…" She pushes my head away. Her cheek tastes like ice cream and/or cake and it's all sticky. "Why you kiss me for?"

"Cause I'm your dad." I put my hand on the back of her head and hold her still for another kiss. "And I'm allowed." Any other time, she'd be all for me kissing her and cuddling her but today, all she wants me to do is put her down so she can play with her friend. She doesn't want me kissing her but I don't care. "I love you, Ly." I peck her on the lips this time. "Happy birthday baby."

"Pumme down…" She says it nicely but I can tell she means business. I grin and put her back down on the ground. She immediately starts running back to the bed that her friend is jumping on but before she climbs up on it, she turns back around and walks back over to me. She wraps her arms around my leg and squeezes. "Luh you too daddy." She says it softly, like it was an afterthought or like she just realized that she does love me. I rub her hair and shake my leg to let her know that she can go play with her friend if she wants. She lets me go and runs back over to the bed. She and her friend are clearly running on their sugar high. They're both jumping on the bed like a pair of wild banshees. Any other day, I would tell Lyla to get down and stop jumping because the last time she jumped on something, she fell, smacked her eye off the coffee table and almost got herself taken off of me by my goddamned mother. But for one, it's her birthday and for two, I'll just let her work off all the sugar from the ice cream and cake.

"You okay, son?" My dad puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. I solidly nod my head. I really am okay now that I got it all out. "You know I'm always here if you gotta talk, right?" I nod again, watching my baby and her friend jumping on the bed and having the best time of their lives. At least Lyla's not feeling the residual effects of not having Jenna here on her birthday. She seems to be enjoying her day and honestly, that's the most important thing to me. Everything I do is for her and if I can see her smile…then well, my life is worth it. "…So what's up with you and Sexy?" I just turn my head and give him an unamused look. Did he really just call Jo sexy? I mean really? "What? Just asking…" He chuckles. "She's incredibly sexy, Alex. Just acknowledge that. She's a great catch." He shakes my shoulder in a wingman kind of fashion and looks at Jo, which makes me look at her too. She's bent over, helping Michelle arrange Lyla's presents in order of how she should open them. "Good with your kid…sexy…polite…what's there not to love about the girl? The polite ones are always the craziest in bed, mark my words son."

I reluctantly peel my eyes off Jo's ass and turn back to my dad. "So what's up with you and Michelle?" I try not to think of Jo in a sexual manner too much. I acknowledge the fact that she's sexy as hell, she has a beautiful body and I would fuck her silly but I don't want to think of her like that all the time. I want to respect Jo as a woman. I don't want to gawk at her ass all the time. I'd rather gawk at those eyes she has than her ass, no matter how magnificent her ass is. "Sounds like you two had some fun rolling the hay. The headboard banged on the wall all damn night. And she seems crazy in bed too…she's a screamer, right?"

"…You heard that." He has a nervous smile on his face but he's looking down like he's embarrassed.

"The whole hotel heard that." I mumble. "And the whole hotel knows how good you are with your mouth too, pops." I nudge him with my elbow. "Look, I'm not trying to knock you…get it how you live it, pop. I'm not judging…you're free to get as much ass as you want. Just keep it down a bit."

"Whatever, sure." He shrugs. "She should open up her presents now." He swiftly changes the conversation with ease. "Before it gets too late."

"Yeah." I walk over to the presents and put my hand on Jo's waist. She turns and looks at me. "We're gonna open presents now…are they all set up?" She glances at my hand on her waist and back at me. I want to kiss her so bad. I want to kiss her to say thank you for being there for me but I also want to kiss her just for being as pretty as she is. She sighs at me having my hand on her waist and nods the answer to my question as she looks me in my eyes. Her eyes are so pretty. They're big. She has big, beautiful brown eyes. I think she's asking me to take my hand off of her but sometimes, I can't help it. Sometimes I just have to touch her. Since I can't kiss her, I blow her one and she blushes. I let her go and turn around. "Lyla, come here. We're gonna open presents." I walk over to the bed and hold my arms out for both her and Chloe to get down safely. The two girls grab my hands and get down off the bed. "Come sit on my lap so we can open presents, Ly."

"…I want my Doedoe." She lets go of my hand and rushes over to Jo. "I sit on my Doedoe's lap." Jo doesn't even question it. She picks Lyla up and sits down with her on her lap. Jo starts bouncing Lyla up and down on her knee and with her free hand, she's stroking Chloe's hair back to fix it. She's not just good with Lyla, she's good with all kids. That's sexy as hell for me, that she's good with kids. "Coey, this is my Doedoe." Lyla touches Jo's cheek and introduces her to Chloe. "Her my best fwend and I luh her lots. Her real nice. And her pitty, looky." Lyla turns around and touches Jo's hair. "Looky…her pitty."

"Her _is_ pwetty." Chloe starts petting Jo's arm hair like she's a puppy. "I want a jowjow."

"Thank you girls." Jo's blushing, which tells me that she doesn't really think she's all that special. I also find that sexy about Jo too. She knows she's hot as hell. I mean, she HAS to know how sexy she is. She has to know that she's gorgeous. But she doesn't flaunt it and she's not cocky about it. She doesn't downplay herself and try to make it seem like she's ugly; she knows she's not. She's just confident about it and that's sexy when a woman knows the difference between confidence and cockiness/conceitedness. "But I think you two are so beautiful." She kisses both Lyla and Chloe's foreheads. "You are two pretty ladies. I wish I looked like you two." She runs her fingers through Chloe's short blonde hair and fixes Lyla's bangs.

"Is you Lyla's mama, Jowjow?" Chloe continues to pet Jo's arm hair. "Cause how come her not have…brown hair like yours?"

"I'm not Lyla's mommy, honey." Jo gently shakes her head. "I'm just a good friend of Lyla's daddy. I'm not her mommy and she's not my baby. I'm just Lyla's Jojo."

"My mama in heabben." Lyla explains to Chloe but for the first time since she's ever spoken about Jenna being in heaven, she doesn't sound sad about it. She sounds kind of happy about it. Maybe she's getting over it. That's comforting. "But I fink…" Lyla leans down and whispers something to Chloe that I can't hear but Jo heard it and she looks a bit teary eyed. She kisses Lyla on her cheek, pretends like she didn't hear it and picks up a present for her to open. I know Jo heard what Lyla said though. Her entire demeanor changed after Lyla whispered whatever it was to Chloe.

 **X X X**

"Hmph…" She makes a noise into the pillow and I watch her fist clench. She groans so I ease up a little bit. I lift her shirt up a little further so I have more exposure and dig my thumbs into her hips. She's laying on her stomach with her arms up underneath the pillow and resting on the sheets and I'm straddling her from behind, massaging her lower back. She has some really bad scars; I didn't realize how bad they were until tonight. "Not so hard there…that hurts…" I lighten up. I rub my thumbs in circles and use the fingertips that are wrapped around to the front of her hips to massage her joints. "This feels so good I might slobber." I snicker and dig my palms into her lower back. "Ughhhh…" She groans again. "Thank you…so much…remind me…to…return this favor someday." She asked me to massage her again. We're going to sleep in separate beds tonight, I'm just massaging her before bed. She told me that her back and her hips felt good after I rubbed her earlier and she asked me to do it again. My dad and Michelle offered to let Lyla sleep with them for the night so Jo and I could have sex. They called it "alone time", but my dad slipped a condom under my pillow and I know what he was implying. I told him that Lyla was fine where she was for the night and she's currently sleeping in the bed opposite from the one Jo and I are in, having crashed from her sugar high. "Ughhhh…." She lifts her head. "A little lower…"

I slide up her shirt and caress the dent in her back right before her butt. The pervy part of me wishes she wasn't wearing these lame ass plaid pajama pants. I wish she was wearing a pair of shorts, at least...a pair of underwear at best and nothing in my desires. "…So what is it that Lyla whispered to her friend? I know you heard it." I press my palms deep into her lower back and I hear it crack. She doesn't even flinch. I guess she's used to her back and her hips cracking like knuckles.

"I didn't hear it." She lies through her teeth but I won't push it. Jo will tell me eventually. "I'm sure it was nothing though….keep rubbing." She bends her legs upward and her feet end up kicking me in my back before she puts them flat again. "Are me and you gonna talk about earlier or are we just gonna sweep it under the rug?"

"We don't have to." I squeeze her hips and apply pressure to them because I've heard through the orthopedic grapevine that applying pressure to a broken pelvis is therapeutic. "I just think you have a point." I admit. "I get where you're coming from. I just want to be able to kiss you whenever I want to and I want it to be okay that we sleep in the same bed. That's all I was trying to say. Sorry if you felt like I was…attacking you or something."

"Sorry if you thought I was rejecting you." She whispers to me. She shakes her hips from side to side to let me know I can stop rubbing her now and so I do. I take my hands off of her and stop straddling her too. "I kind of like the way things are right now though, Alex." She turns over on her back and I sit down next to her. "We don't have to rush anything and if we don't have to then why should we? We don't have to rush. We have time."

I lay on my side and prop myself up on my elbow. She turns her head and looks at me. She's right, as usual. If we don't have to rush, why should we? I can't kiss her whenever I feel like kissing her and I still have to set an alarm if I want to sleep in the same bed as her, but that's just a small price to pay. At least I can kiss her. At least I can sleep in the same bed as her at times. It's just conditional. Her eyes are smiling at me, even though her mouth isn't. She's so pretty. "…Please kiss me, Jo." I trace her lips with my finger as they curl up into a sexy grin. "I'm serious…please kiss me." I whisper. "Don't leave me hanging here." She shows some teeth in her smile and puts her hand on the back of my head. She pulls my head down to hers since she's laying down and I'm not and our lips meet for the first time without any stifling anticipation. We kiss hard yet smooth. Her lips glide across mine and kissing her lips feels so much better than kissing her stomach, although kissing that beautiful body of hers is something I still long to do again. For the first time, her mouth opens and mine does too and our tongues meet. Even her tongue is soft. Her breath still tastes like the toothpaste she brushed her teeth with before bed and her tongue presses against mine with pent up aggression. I force my tongue against hers as well, showing her that she's not in charge here. She allows me to have control of the kiss willingly, so I slow it down. Her fingers trace along my abs as we kiss and there's one part of my body that's eager to join in on the fun, stiffening with each stroke of her fingertip along my abdomen. I roll over and shift my weight on top of her, careful not to crush her like the delicate woman she is. She wraps her arms around my neck and strokes my hair. I have to breathe and so does she, so we pull away.

She's breathing heavy and looking up at me. I'm struggling right now. There's a piece of me that wishes I had taken my father up on the offer and shipped Lyla off to my dad and Michelle for the night, so I can have my way with Jo. I'm not saying that she's easy but I wholeheartedly believe if my daughter wasn't in the room right now, I could get in Jo's pants tonight. I'm quite convincing at times and judging by the way she just kissed me, she wants me too. There's sexual tension between us, no doubt. I could take the condom my dad left me out of my suitcase where I stashed it and go rounds with her tonight. However, there's another piece of me that wants to wait. I want to have sex with her so badly but Jo's not the kind of girl you just have sex with without meaning. I want wait until our sex has meaning and if I had sex with her right now, it would only be because I'm horny and need someone to pump. I can't allow myself to hurt her like that. I want to respect her, especially after everything she did for me today. I hold Jo up on a pedestal and I'm not going to jeopardize that because I'm horny and haven't had sex in over a year.

I peck her on her lips one last time, innocently. "Goodnight, Jo."


	29. Loss

Balancing the tray in the middle of my hand, I walk with it back to my section. It's kind of rough to be back at work after spending the last week just lounging around Disney World but there's a piece of me that actually kind of missed this. Not running around on my feet and busting my ass for tips, but the environment and the people, I mean. I work with Lucille, Kaylee and Macy today. Lucille is bartending, Kaylee's on the floor with me and Macy's working outside. I can't wait to have outdoor tables. Tony stuck me on outdoor for tomorrow and I'm so excited. I'm willing to bet that being outdoors will beat the hell out of being cooped up in this stuffy, tiny restaurant all day. I put the tray on the edge of the table and disperse the refills to the group of people I've been waiting on for the last hour. It's a group of four teenagers. "Anything else I can get you right now?" I reach in my apron and hand them extra straws. "Extra ranch? Buffalo sauce?" Each of them shake their heads so I politely nod and back away. "Let me know if you need anything." I turn around and head back to the bar so I can sit down. It's a Tuesday afternoon, Tuesdays are never busy and this Tuesday is no exception. I sigh and climb up onto a barstool. Of course Lucille, Kaylee and Macy have had lots of questions for me and I expected them to. I expected to walk in here today and be bombarded by questions, giggles and snide comments.

Truth be told, there's really not that much for me to tell. I could tell them how I kissed Alex like five times within the last week, I could tell them how we're moving up to something more than friends and I could tell them how I get butterflies every time he looks at me but that's really none of their business. Before leaving the park yesterday afternoon, Alex and I came to an agreement and we've decided to not mention anything to anybody until we're sure about this. A week in Disney World really didn't clear up anything. It kick-started some things but it didn't really clear up much. Since things are still pretty messy between us, the things I've told my friends about the trip to Disney don't get any more detailed than what we did each day. I told them how the first day, we took his daughter around to meet the princesses, the second day was boring, the third day was her birthday and we saw the animals, the fourth day was spent at a waterpark, the fifth day was spent at Hollywood Studios and the sixth day was spent in the other waterpark. I told them that my favorite ride was the spinning teacup ride that we had to go back on the seventh day and ride before we got back on the plane, since it was closed on the first day. I told them how expensive everything was, how I only bought a snow globe for my mom, how nice the hotel was and how good the food was. They were a little disappointed when I told them that nothing had happened between me and Alex. I think they were kind of expecting me to tell them that we had sex and I hate to disappoint, but the most I have to report is just a kiss. I could've told them how he made my entire body tremble when he kissed my stomach and my lower half but again, I'm keeping that to myself.

After being with the two of them for a week straight, I found that when I got home to my empty house yesterday evening, I really missed Alex and Lyla. I was pretty tired when I got home yesterday, so all I did was take a shower and go to sleep. I slept from 7:00 yesterday evening to 10:00 this morning and I've never felt so refreshed but when I woke up this morning, I was still just missing them. I thought about walking up the street to say good morning for a few hours before I went off to work at noon, but then I remembered that Alex had to work at 6:00 this morning and he won't be off until 4:30 this afternoon. Something's definitely changed between me and Alex because prior to the Disney trip, I wouldn't have even thought about walking down the street and showing up at Alex's front step but these days, it's not something that I would even turn my nose up at. Showing up on Alex's porch is something I would consider normal at this point. I miss Lyla too. I miss hearing her voice calling me "her Jojo" and her shrieking at Alex when he tried to take her away from me. For the final three days in Disney, she slept in my bed with me and when Alex tried to get her to sleep with him instead, she shrieked and told him to go away. She makes me smile so much. That's my baby girl.

"Look alive." Lucille slams a soaking wet washcloth down on the bar and starts scrubbing water rings from the condensation on the glasses of drinks off the counter. "Tough coming back to work after spending a week in the lap of luxury with your boyfriend?" Once she's done cleaning off the counter, she rests her elbows on it and leans forward to talk to me. Out of all my coworkers, I think Lucille is the easiest to talk to. She just knows the most about me and by the way she doesn't feel the need to actually talk about the things she knows about me, she reminds me a lot of myself that way. If was going to break the agreement Alex and I have about not telling anyone, Lucille is the person I'd break it with. It's just that…she's older. She's older, more experienced in life and she's been happily married for quite some time now. She knows better than any of my coworkers what it's like to maintain a successful, healthy relationship and I could use her advice if I ever really need it. I like to think of her as a second version of my mother. "Sorry you have such a harsh crash back down into reality." Her tone is soft like she really means that she's sorry although nothing is truly her fault.

"He's not my boyfriend." I absentmindedly push on the washcloth to make water squirt out of the sides of it. Speaking of my mother, she's supposed to be coming into town on Friday. She texted me a little earlier this morning and told me that she had a change of plans. She has a mandatory teaching workshop that everybody in her school district has to attend for two days next week so she couldn't stay for the five days like she originally wanted to. When I read the first part of that text, I initially started beaming because I thought that maybe by the grace of god, I had actually escaped the wrath of my mother, at least for this month. I was so very wrong. I should've known she wasn't just going to NOT come. Instead, she's only coming for a weekend. She's leaving Thursday night and she should be in town by Friday morning. She'll stay Friday, Saturday and Sunday and she'll be back home by Monday evening to attend her training on Tuesday and Wednesday. At least she's not staying for five days and I'll take the weekend over the five days any day. I didn't feel right asking Tony for three days off so I could entertain my mother when I just came back from a weeklong vacation, so I just made arrangements with Kaylee and Macy so I can have Friday, Saturday and Sunday off anyway. I have to work Kaylee's shift tomorrow, Macy's shift Thursday and Macy's shift on Monday so Kaylee can work my Friday and Macy can work my Saturday and Sunday. It all worked out in the end, I do believe. "So anything happen around here while I was gone?"

"Anything like what? You know Millerton ranked number one for most boring town in the country. Like anything could ever happen here." She follows my lead and pushes on the washcloth to make the water spew out the sides too. Call me crazy, but I'd rather live in boring old Millerton than Chamberlain any day. I don't think about Chamberlain quite as often as I used to. Every now and again, I'll catch myself wondering what ever happened to the house I left behind, about what people had to say when they realized I was gone and what Mrs. Robinson is up to. But I don't think about it as much as I once did. I've been living in Florida since the end of May and the end of this month will mark two months since I've been here and I don't regret a single moment. It was rough at first, me moving into a house with no furniture. But in nearly two months, I've got a job, a house, friends and I'm still working on saving up to actually rent a living room set. It's not perfect but I'm working on it. As I've said before, I didn't come to Florida in search of a new life to live with someone. But I think…I think I might've found it with Alex and Lyla. I don't want to jinx anything though, especially after what I heard Lyla say to her little friend back in Disney. I look down at the bar counter and sigh. That thing that Lyla said to her friend has really been in the back of my mind heavy. Lucille reaches across the counter and touches my hair. "Hair's getting long again."

"Yeah, I know…" I run my fingers through it and find that she's right. I didn't really notice until she just said something about it to be completely honest. It is longer though. When I first cut it, it just barely touched my shoulders. It's a long way past my shoulders now. It almost touches my boobs. It's a shame how fast my hair grows. It's always grown fast though, ever since I was a little girl. My mom calls my hair a freak of nature and she always told me that she thinks my dad was half werewolf or something. "I should probably go get it cut again and colored but…" I rest my chin in my hands and sigh. "Where are all the salons around here? I mean, I haven't really seen any. Unless there are none…"

"Why get it cut? It's growing so nicely." She tilts her head with a crooked smirk on her face. "Unless that boyfriend of yours likes his woman's hair short."

"He's not my boyfriend." I smile and shake my head. "I don't know how many times I'm going to have to say that."

"Say it until you believe it, girly." She's looking at me like she's expecting me to crack under pressure. "Because that look on your face isn't enough to convince me, let alone yourself." I start laughing out of nervousness. "What actually happened on that trip?"

"Nothing." I hide behind my hands because I'm blushing and I know if she sees me blushing, she'll never let me live it down. I'm blushing so hard though. "Nothing happened between me and Alex but believe me, if something did happen…" I take my hands away from my face. "You'd be the first to know." She raises her eyebrows and narrows her eyes at me. I crack another nervous smile. "Bye Lucille…" I hop down off the barstool I was sitting on and hurry back to my section before Lucille starts pressing me for any more information. I wish I could tell someone what happened between me and Alex, I really do. But we have an agreement and until this becomes settled or more clear on what we're going to be, we're not saying anything. Initially, I thought that our agreement to not say anything was essentially directed at Lyla. I thought he just didn't want to say anything to Lyla but he made it clear that he didn't want to say anything to ANYONE when I asked him if his dad knew that we kissed. I don't know, his dad was just giving me a weird look so I thought maybe he knew but I was wrong. "Would you like another beer, sir?" I stop at a table. This man has been here for about an hour and he hasn't ordered food. He sat for half an hour before he decided to order a beer and he's been sitting here for half an hour with an empty glass. He looks like he's just trying to unwind from a long day of work and since it's going on 3:30, I'm willing to bet that's the case.

He requested me. I've never seen him a day in my life, I've never waited on him before but he requested me. I get a lot of requests for someone that's new here. Kaylee seems to think that it's because old men come in here to get a beer and some crab legs and when they're all juiced up with alcohol in their systems, they get horny and I'm fun to look at. I don't really think I'm fun to look at, but of my coworkers think I am so maybe it's just a little bit true. I don't mind with the old guys come in here and request me just because I'm "fun to look at", because they tip me so well. "No, I'm alright hon." He adjusts the baseball cap he has on his head and looks at me with wandering eyes. Since the passing of the Fourth of July, our dress code has been altered a bit. From July 5th to August 23rd, we're allowed to wear blue jean shorts with our green polo shirts. Today is the first time I've actually taken Tony up on the offer and wore a pair of shorts to work so I guess that's why this man's eyes are wandering. I only wore the shorts because all of my jeans are dirty and I haven't made it to the laundromat yet since I only just got home yesterday evening. I'll go when I get off work tonight. I get off at 5:00 and I'm pretty sure the laundromat closes at 8:00. It'll only take me like an hour to wash up all my clothes.

Since he said he's fine without another beer, I smile and nod. "Alright sir, I'll leave this right here with you." I open up my check pad and tear out the shortest one with nothing but a beer on it. I tear it out and sit it on the table. "If you want anything else before you leave, just give me a shout." I turn away and go back to my table of teenagers. "How's everything around here?" I notice their drink glasses are empty and file through my mind to remember what it was that they got. "More Dr. Peppers? How about another strawberry lemonade?" All of them shake their heads at me as they're still busy chowing down on their food. "Alright, if you need anything else just let me know." I turn around and head back for the bar. I really wish I was in Disney World instead of being here right now. I sit down on a barstool again and sigh. "Does anybody else hate working on Tuesdays or is that just me?"

"Nope…feeling's mutual." Kaylee sits down on the stool next to me and offers me the basket of miniature boneless garlic chicken wings that she bought to eat on her break. Technically, she's supposed to go on break after me because she came in at 2:00 and she's here until 10:00. I came in at 12:00 and I'm here until 5:00 so I was supposed to have been took my break. But I like taking my break last, closer to the end of my shift. It just lets me know that it's almost time for me to go home, so I don't mind taking my break after everyone else. When Tony's not around to police all of us, we do things our own way. I grab a piece of chicken and take a bite of it. "Tuesdays are so slow. I'd rather work a million Sundays than work a Tuesday." She licks chicken grease off her fingers and takes a sip of her strawberry lemonade. "What was the food like at Disney, Jo?" She asks. She wasn't around when I told Macy and Lucille about the food at Disney. She was only around for my makeshift itinerary I gave. "Was it any good? Or was it overpriced for good reason?"

"Overpriced for good reason." I swallow the bite of chicken I have in my mouth and lick my lips. "I had this fried rice at Mulan's restaurant and it was like an orgasm for my mouth." I grab another piece of chicken. "If it wasn't for Alex, I probably would've starved for a week. I thought $150 would cover all my food but I was so sadly mistaken. I would've starved to death because I could've spent $150 on food in one day." I shove the entire piece of chicken in my mouth. If I were around anyone else, I probably wouldn't have done that but Lucille and Kaylee are used to me and I'm used to them so it's okay if I look like a disgusting pig around them. They burp and fart around me. Now me? I'll burp around them but I don't fart around ANYONE except maybe my mom and even then, it's an accident and it doesn't happen often. "It was way overpriced but they like…I dunno, they made it worth it, I guess. They charged you $20.00 for a slice of pizza but it was a big, thick slice and the toppings were free. And I had a $15.00 ice cream cone but they piled the ice cream on the cone so high that it could've toppled over. So it was overpriced but they gave you your money's worth."

"Well that's good. At least they didn't make you pay 20 bucks for a slice of pizza and make it a measly slice. That would've pissed me off." She stirs her lemonade with the straw in her glass. "I can't wait until I have kids. I wanna take them to Disney World. That'll be like…fifty thousand days of work to save up for it but it'll be worth it. I hope I have a little girl so I can take her to the princesses and stuff. Sounds like you had a blast." I just give her a toothless grin. Kaylee's still very young and she's in college for nursing. She's still got a ways to go before she's ready to have kids. I wish I was her age again. There are so many things I would've done differently if I was her age again. Like first and foremost, I wouldn't have given up my dreams just to make myself smaller and less important, all for the approval of Mark's parents. I'd be an actuary by now, making a six-figure salary and doing a job that I love as opposed to sitting on my ass in a diner working like hell for tip money. I just would've done my life differently if I were still Kaylee's age. "You're like what, Jo? 29?" I nod my head and fold my hands. "How come you never had kids?" She tilts her head. "I mean, you're not exactly old and there's still time for you to have some but I was just wondering why you haven't already? Isn't this like…your golden years or whatever?"

I shrug. "I'm just letting things play out. It's not like I don't want kids because I do…I wouldn't mind being a mother someday but for one, I'm not exactly mother material right now, Kay." I suck some chicken out of my teeth with my tongue before I continue. "I live in a crappy one bedroom house and I still don't have all the furniture I need. I make three bucks an hour and you can't raise a baby on tip money. I'm not exactly in the position to pop out a baby right now in my life. I'm just letting things play out right now. I'm not looking around for someone to have a baby with. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And besides…" I wipe the corners of my mouth with my fingertips. "I kind of have a kid. She's not really mine, but she might as well be. I'm basically like her nanny anyway."

"You mean Suckalicious' daughter?" She wiggles her eyebrows up and down.

"…Did you just call Alex, 'Suckalicious'?" I squint my eyes and tilt my head. That has to be the most bizarre thing I've ever heard come out of Kaylee's mouth and that's saying a lot because Kaylee has said some pretty off-the-wall stuff in our time working together. She smiles and nods her head like she's proud of herself. "…Why?" I raise an eyebrow.

"Because he totally is. He's suckalicious, Jo. He's totally suck-worthy." She nudges me with her elbow. I put my index finger and my middle finger to my temple and massage it. If and when me and Alex's relationship becomes serious enough to the point where I can tell my friends about us, I can already tell that they're going to be the death of me. My friends are so strange. It's like they're so infatuated with Alex but they're all happily taken so they can't have him and for that reason, they want me to have him. I don't need any of their help getting the guy though. If I want Alex, I can get him myself. They don't have to tease and taunt me about it and force me into it. I've gotten this far on my own. …I'll admit that Alex is pretty suck-worthy though. "Well Jo…let's hypothetically say that you marry dear old Suckalicious…you know you'd basically be his daughter's mother, right? Ever think about that?"

"Shut up, Kaylee." I roll my eyes and look away from her. Of course I've thought about that. Not about marrying Alex but about the fact that I would be Lyla's mother if it ever did happen. I thought about that a lot, actually. Ever since her birthday party and I heard what she said to her friend, I've thought about that. Honestly, prior to hearing Lyla say what she said to her friend, I never thought about that. I was perfectly content with the way things were. I didn't mind just being a motherly figure to her. I didn't mind just being the woman in her life that she could look to as a mother for advice and stuff. I didn't want to marry Alex and actually _become_ her stepmother. I never wanted that. It was never even a factor. But ever since I heard Lyla say what she said, the thought's been creeping into my mind and quite honestly, it's been freaking me the hell out. I just…I can't think straight anymore. I can't even look at Alex without the thought popping into my mind and it's making me crazy. It drives me nuts that I can't look at him without thinking about what his daughter would initially want and I don't know if I'm ready for that. I just want to take this slow and I just…I can't help but think that if and when we tell Lyla that we're boyfriend and girlfriend, she might push us a little further because I know what she wants out of me and Alex. I know what she's going to want to happen and Alex pretty much listens to whatever she says and what if it gets pushed too far and I'm not ready? It's just becoming too much for me. I wish I had never heard her say that. I sigh and speak up again so Kaylee doesn't think that I'm seriously mad at her. "I said she's _like_ my daughter. _Like_ being the operative word here. I don't want her to be my daughter, she's just…like one."

"Can I be totally honest with you for a second, Jo?" She picks up her name badge off the counter of the bar and I can tell that she's about to come back from her break which means I have to go take mine now. I nonchalantly nod my head and drum my fingers along the bar counter, a little nervous at what she might say. "You and Alex would make a beautiful couple. I know you guys are just friends, but have you ever seriously considered maybe taking a step in his direction? The man's lonely and you're single…it wouldn't hurt if you just tried to date him."

"I don't need a wingman, Kay." I pat her on the shoulder to let her know that I appreciate her telling me that she thinks Alex and I would make such a cute couple and hop down off the barstool again. I need to go collect my tips from the lousy two tables I had before I go on my break.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Yeah, that's fine. No, I don't care. Yeah. Just be careful. Alright…see you later...bye." I hang my phone up, toss it on the passenger's seat next to me and continue on up the highway. Work was so boring today that I literally could not wait to get home. I literally didn't scrub in on any surgeries whatsoever. Arizona had a bowel resection but I was too busy catching up on my discharges and my charts from the week I took off. The interns had their intern exams today so I couldn't just pawn my work off on them like I usually do. The only surgery that we even had today was Arizona's bowel resection. It was such a slow, boring day. I was actually looking forward to coming home and spending some time with Lyla since my day was so boring but as soon as I got in the car to come home, my dad called to say that he and Lyla are still at the YMCA swimming. He called around my lunch hour and asked if he could take her swimming today and I didn't care. It's a hot day outside, she doesn't need to be cooped up in my dad's house with nothing to do. I was expecting her to be home when I got off of work though and my dad just called to tell me otherwise.

It was kind of hard to go back to work today after being in Disney for a week. I got so used to lounging around and spending my days doing relatively nothing that coming back to work was kind of a shock back into reality. I am pretty glad to be home though. There's something about being in my own bed, in my own shower and in my own home that beats the hell out of living in a hotel room for a week. Lyla's happy to be home too. She won't readily admit that she's glad to be home because she cried so hard when we had to leave but when we got home yesterday night, she went straight to her bedroom and started playing with her toys. She wrote a "letter" to Jenna before she went to bed last night and I promised her that we could mail it today when I got off of work. She just told Jenna all about her trip to Disney World and how it was the best birthday ever and how her favorite part was meeting all the princesses and seeing all the animals and she told her that she wanted to go back someday. She acted a fool when it was time for us to leave though. On the last night there, she stayed down at Chloe's hotel room for a couple of hours to say goodbye. Jo made sure I got Chloe's family's address and her phone number so that she and Lyla could stay in touch sometime. When we were leaving the hotel to take the rental car back and go to the airport, Lyla threw a FIT. She screamed and kicked me and yelled and I had to threaten to take the doll I bought her from the princess store back if she didn't calm down. She wanted to stay so badly. She didn't tell Jenna how she gave me a hard way to go on the way home in the letter—she left that teeny bit out, now didn't she?

I make the turn that leads me into the sleepy neighborhoods of Millerton and drive slowly through the streets, just in case there are kids outside playing and whatnot. When I got home last night, it wasn't long until I started to miss Jo. Being with her for a week and then being without her is kind of surreal in a way. I miss having her company and I miss her making me laugh. The entire time on the Disney trip, she singlehandedly made me laugh more than I've laughed in the last seven months. Maybe I can go see her for a little while since Lyla's not around. It still sucks that we have to sneak around behind everyone's back and see each other but it is what it is. We both agreed that we wouldn't tell anyone about us until we're sure. Which means I haven't told my dad, I haven't told Lyla and I didn't ask Stacy out, although I talked to her a few times today. I know Jo and I aren't really dating or committed to each other, but I still feel a loyalty to her; which is why I didn't ask Stacy out. I'm technically single but my heart is kind of locked down to somebody, if that makes sense. I don't think anybody has any idea how hard it's been to not say anything to my dad. My dad is usually the one I go to for advice and I tell him everything. But I promised Jo I wouldn't say anything to anyone and I'm going to keep that promise. It kills me to look at my dad and not say anything though. I just want to tell him to stop slipping condoms in my pocket every chance he gets because I'm not sleeping with Jo—but I have kissed her. He'd be so proud if he knew that I kissed her because right now, he's still just thinking that we're friends and I'm not getting any action.

Speaking of action, I've gone a year and some change without sex. I'm perfectly fine without it but ever since I kissed Jo the way I did when she was standing in front of me in her underwear, I've been catching myself fantasizing about her. There's been a little bit of tension between us since that happened, but most of it just causes us to joke about sex a lot. Like for example, we made a bet that I would say the word "sex" before she does. If I win and she says it before I do, she has to either kiss me or seven minutes straight or go down on me, her choice. If she wins and I say it before she does, I have to let her kiss me for five minutes straight and I CAN'T touch her at all while she's kissing me. Either that, or I have to give her a hickey somewhere that's not visible. She set the punishment for if she wins and I set the punishment for if I win. It's just a joke though. We made that bet the night I massaged her after Lyla's birthday party and neither one of us have even mentioned it again. It was just a joke and that's as far as the sexual tension between us has even gone. A year without sex and all of a sudden, I'm stuck fantasizing about a woman while I'm in the shower? While I'm lying in bed at night? I still don't really know how far this thing between me and Jo is going to go, but I'm hoping it goes far enough for me to sleep with her. I just can't imagine myself having all this pent up sexual frustration every time I'm around her and not eventually getting to sleep with her. I have to sleep with her at least once before we break up or whatever it is that we would do since we're not really dating. If we stop all of this and end up just being friends in the end, then I'm really stuck just wanting to jump her bones from here until eternity. Don't get wrong; that's not all I'm after. I don't just want to have sex with Jo. I do want her, but that's not all I want. When I fantasize about that woman, I fantasize about making love to her. Slow and steady, not rough and dirty. And I know the only way to make my fantasy come true is if I spend time romancing her. I want to have special sex with her; the kind of sex you have after being with someone and desiring them for a while. The only thing better than actual sex is anticipation.

Instead of passing by the Lobster Hut like I always do on my way home, I flick my turn signal and pull into the parking lot. She should still be at work and if she's not then I'll just get back in the car and go to her house. I want to see her and since we're no longer in that "it would be awkward if I just showed up at her house" stage, I can go see her at her house if I want to. It's not often Jo and I get to have some alone time. Now, I'm just speaking upon the last week though. We haven't really pseudo-dated while being at home. The only time we've pseudo-dated was at Disney World and of course we're going to be in my daughter's company when the entire trip was for her. But now we're doing this kind-of-dating thing back here in Millerton and I'm really hoping that we'll get more time alone here than we did in Orlando. I find a parking spot and shut my car off. With my hands in my pockets, I lightly jog up the steps that lead to the restaurant and open the front door.

"Hello." The little hostess girl greets me at the podium and turns around to grab a menu. "Just one? And are you dining or for the bar?"

"Yeah, just one." I try to catch a glimpse at the board to see if I can see Jo's name on it but I can't read it from where I'm standing, so I clear my throat to ask. The answer if I'm dining or for the bar is depending upon if she's working and where she's working. If she's on the floor, I'll dine and grab like a basket of mozzarella sticks or something. If she's bartending, I'll sit at the bar and grab a beer. "Is Jo still working? If so, can I have her section, wherever she's at?"

"Jo…" She turns around and looks at the board. "…She's on break right now but I can seat you in her section and she'll grab you when she's off of break…"

I suck my teeth and sigh. I crane my neck around to see if I can see her because if she's on break, she's not outside like she is sometimes when she takes her breaks. Unless she's in the back. No, she's right there. She's sitting at the bar. "I just want the bar, ma'am." I tell the hostess. She nods, puts the menu back and marks something down before stepping aside and letting me through. I make my way to the bar and creep up very quietly behind her. One of her friends sees me. I don't know her name, but it's the one with the really tan skin and the long brown hair. Her friend smiles at me and I put my finger up to my lips to tell her to be quiet. She nods and just watches me. I quietly stand right behind her and look over her shoulder to see what she's doing. She's scrolling through her cell phone, tapping her straw on the counter to break through the paper and open it up and singing along very softly to Somebody To Love by Queen that's playing overheard on the speakers."…JO!" I put my hands on her shoulders and yell her name.

She jumps nearly off the barstool and gasps, but doesn't scream. Her eyes got so wide and her gasp was so loud that it could've been a scream, which makes me laugh. "…Don't do that." She buries her face in her hands and puts her head down. Still laughing, I take my hands off her shoulders and put them on her hips for a moment before I remind myself that we're keeping our thing a secret. I'm very tempted to kiss her cheek but I won't because this is a secret. Damn, I missed her. I haven't seen her since yesterday and I really missed her face. "No Alex, I'm so serious…don't do that." Her head is still down and buried in her hands. I take the empty seat beside her. She picks her head up and looks at me. "…I'm not like most girls. I don't scream when I get scared, I swing. I swing when I get scared and you were about to catch a right hook to the jaw. Don't do that."

"You swing?" I pick up the straw paper and roll it up into a ball. I toss it at her and it gets stuck in the waves of her hair.

She looks at me like I'm a nuisance and just blinks at me. "Yes…I swing. It's just my natural reaction. You know how some people scream when they get scared? Well I don't. My fist bawls up and I swing. Which is why I've never been to a haunted house or haunted hayride around Halloween. Because if someone scares me, they're getting punched. It's just how I am." I chuckle. She plucks the straw paper out of her hair and rolls it between her fingers. "So what are you doing here? I thought you worked until 4:30. It's not 4:30 yet, is it?"

"Nah, I finished my charts early and Arizona let me come home." My eyes trace her entire body, purely out of habit. Her hair is especially messy and wavy today and it looks prettier than usual. She's wearing her usual green polo shirt and this just in, a pair of shorts. I don't like that she's wearing shorts around all these old guys, but she's not my girlfriend and it's not my place to say anything. I just know that if I look at those legs (and I do, those legs are sexy as hell) then other men look at them too and I don't like thinking about that. "Lyla went swimming with my dad so she's out and about. I just thought I'd come bother you for a little. What time you get off?"

"Five." She sighs.

"That's not too far away…you need a lift home?" I slide her cup of iced tea over towards me and take a sip of it. She looks at me like I'm crazy but I just shrug. Friends can drink off of each other. People don't have to immediately think that me drinking off of her makes us a couple.

"I get off at FIVE, I said." She takes her tea back and drinks some of it herself. "It's only 4:00, you'd have to wait an hour."

"So, I'll just wait an hour." I shrug again. "I'll grab something to eat, some takeout for Lyla and that should pass the hour, right? It's not like you guys are busy." I look around and they're not. It's dead as hell in here. You want a ride or not?" She shrugs her shoulders. I sigh. "Well what are you doing later?" She seems like she's in a bad mood so I won't push her any further.

"I have to go to the laundromat and wash my clothes before my mother comes into town on Thursday and chastises me for having a pile of dirty laundry all over my room." Her tone is very sour. I just came to see her, did I do something wrong? "What are you doing later?"

"Hanging out with Lyla." I know I shouldn't, but I reach over and put my hand on her back anyway. I don't know why she's in such a bad mood. "I have a washer and a dryer, you know." I offer. "Anytime you need your clothes washed, I'm just down the street…and I'm free. I won't take all your quarters." She cracks a soft smile, finally. "You wanna come over and wash your clothes for a little while?"

"Yeah, that'd be good." She takes one last sip of her iced tea before passing it off to me. "I have to get back to work. Did you want something from the bar, or?" I shake my head. "Okay, then come sit in my section. I'll show you where."

I slide off the barstool and follow her.

 **X X X**

I nudge the glass bowl of popcorn over towards the middle of the couch cushions so she can reach it better. We're sitting at opposite ends of the couch, watching Pet Sematary in the darkness and this is literally the extent of our evening. I rode her home from work and she told me that she'd be back down my house in an hour or so, so she could wash her clothes. She had to shower and stuff before she came down. My dad brought Lyla home about fifteen minutes after I walked through the door from taking Jo home. My poor little girl was so tired when she walked through the door. She was trying so hard to stay awake and tell me about her day with her pappy but she just couldn't. She was swaying from side to side while I was giving her a bath and her eyes couldn't stay open so I put her to bed. I tried to keep her awake too, so she could see Jo. I didn't want her to fall asleep at 5:30 because that means she's going to be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning but it would've been so cruel if I had kept her up with the way she couldn't even keep her eyes open. She was so tired. Swimming always makes Lyla tired. It's only 9:30 but she's still sleeping and I think if she hasn't woken up by now, she won't wake up for a while. "Why didn't you tell me your mom's coming to visit?"

"Didn't know I had to." She adjusts her position on the couch and grabs one single piece of popcorn. She's been done washing her clothes for about an hour now but somehow I talked her into staying a little longer and watching a movie with me. I just want to spend time with Jo. I can tell she wants to spend time with me too because it really didn't take me too long to convince her to stay. All I said was, "hey look, Pet Sematary is on" and she sat right down and watched it with me. I popped some popcorn and she laid on my couch and this is how we've been since around 8:20. "I don't even want her to come. She's not going to do anything but nag me to death."

"…Should I meet her or something?" I grab a handful of popcorn.

"Why?" She turns to me and sounds offended. "Why would you want to?" She sounds like she's talking to a mentally incapacitated person. "She's just my mom."

"Well you met my dad, so." I shrug. "I was just asking if I should."

"We don't have to do that. The whole…meet the parents thing? No. We don't have to do that, Alex. I kind of had no choice but to meet your dad. You have the choice to meet my mom and I'm telling you to choose no." I sigh and just watch the movie. She kind of seems like she doesn't want to take any forward steps with this. I'm not sure what she wants from me anymore. I thought she wanted to slowly ease into a relationship. I thought us kissing and professing our interest in one another meant that we're not exactly dating yet, but we're trying to build our relationship up to the point where we can actually start. That's what I thought. But she's freaking out about me meeting her mother. I mean, it's just her mom. She met my dad. It's not that big of a deal. Even if I don't meet her mom as Jo's boyfriend, I can meet her mom as Jo's friend, can't I? And last time I checked, Jo's mom's from New Jersey. Who knows when the next chance I get to meet her will even be? "…Unless you want to?" She has a very inquisitive tone. "I didn't mean to upset you, I just didn't think you'd want to. I was just trying to give you an out. Did you want to…meet my mom?"

"I mean, it would be nice." I keep my attention on the television set. "It doesn't have to be weird. It doesn't have to be like the typical 'boyfriend meeting parents' thing. It could just be as your friend. You met my dad as my friend and you know my dad as my friend, not as my lady friend. I can meet your mom as your friend…you know, if that's okay with you."

"It's fine with me, I don't care. I just didn't know that you'd want to. I didn't want you to feel obligated." She grabs another piece of popcorn.

"…I think it'd be nice if I did." That's the last thing that comes out of either of us before we just watch the movie in silence. Pet Sematary really is a freaky movie when you think about it. All of Stephen King's movies are freaky, but Pet Sematary is a FREAKY one. If you've ever seen the movie, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you've never seen it, you're missing out on a lot of craziness. It's basically about a couple whose child dies. In their neighbor's backyard is a magical cemetery and if you bury something in that cemetery, it'll come back to life. So the couple buries their dead kid in the cemetery and the kid comes back to life but he ends up killing everyone because he comes back to life as a zombie or whatever and then come to find out, whatever you bury in the cemetery comes back to life as a killer. It's a really creepy movie. "…Would you bury Mark in the cemetery?" I finally break the silence between us with a question.

She takes a moment before she answers. "…You mean like…before watching this movie or after?" She looks at me. She has a funny look on her face and I can tell she's fighting off a smile. "Because before watching this movie, I might've considered it but after watching this movie, hell no. He's not coming back and killing me." We both start laughing. "Well would you? Bury Jenna or even Lyla, I mean."

"Nah." I shake my head. "I would really have to consider burying Lyla in there though, but as for Jenna, hell no. There's just something about me that would be more inclined to want to bury Lyla, you know? I know both of them are gonna come back killers, but I think I'd be more willing to take my chances burying her. I'd just want to have my daughter back… not that I could care less about Jenna, it's just that I would think longer and harder about Lyla. That's my daughter, my baby. I'd want her back, killer and all. But truthfully? I'm not burying either one of them in that cemetery. I'm sorry, but they'd both just still be dead."

"No, I understand what you're saying, I do." She nods her head. "I'd think harder about burying my baby in the cemetery than I would with Mark, I get what you mean." She grabs a handful of popcorn this time. "Oh, how about this…" She eats a few pieces. "If you were a ghost…who's the first person you'd come back and haunt? And what would you do as a ghost?"

I start laughing. "…I'd haunt the fuck out of my mother." Her jaw drops and she shakes her head. I start laughing so hard that I feel myself starting to choke on my popcorn. "What? You asked…and that's who it would be. I wouldn't kill her or harm her or anything….I'd just haunt her ass. I'd turn the shower water cold on her, I'd flush the toilet in the middle of the night, pull the covers off of her…the usual. I wouldn't be a violent ghost like you see in the movies. I'd be more like…like Casper."

"You are so twisted. You'd haunt your own mother…" She's laughing too and still shaking her head at me. "I'd haunt Mark's parents." She pokes her lip out as a sign of triumph and nods her head like she's pretty pleased with her decision. "I'd haunt those assholes. And I would be violent. Screw Casper, I'd go full-out Poltergeist on those bitches." She shrugs. "I'm dragging bitches by their ponytails, busting holes in their walls…I'm screwing their shit all the way up. I'd slap his mother across the face and then I'd probably piss in his dad's mouth while he's sleeping. Oooh, I would do them so dirty!"

"Something you wanna tell me here, Jo? A police officer, maybe?" I raise my eyebrow and she winks at me. "Remind me to never piss you off." She sticks her tongue out at me and eats some more popcorn. I think Jo's a little bit crazy but I kind of like it. She's told me bits and pieces about why she hates her boyfriend's parents so much but I don't really know a lot of details. I guess I don't need to know and she'll probably tell me eventually anyway. I clear my throat so I can talk to her. I have a question I'd like to ask her. "…Look Jo, I know you don't believe in heaven and stuff…" I ease her into it. It's kind of heavy as compared to the joking we were just doing but I just want to know. She looks at me like she's keeping an open mind. "But let's just say for a second that there is one and it does exist, okay?" She nods. "…Do you think Mark went to it?" She nods again, slower this time. "…Well do you think maybe…he's taking care of Jenna up there? Was he the kind of guy that would've done that? Or no…"

"…Mhm." She hesitates but nods anyway. "If there is a heaven, Mark surely went to it. And he was totally the kind of guy that would take care of Jenna." She whispers that last part. "…You think Jenna's taking care of my baby?" I hear tears in her voice but she didn't let them fall. "…She needs a mother up there."

I put the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table so it's not in the way and hold my arms out for her. She rolls her eyes at me but I keep my arms open. Eventually, she climbs across the couch and falls into them. I wrap my arms around her and squeeze her because I'm pretty sure she needs a hug right now. "…It was a girl?" She nods her head against my chest. Being a pediatrician, I've obviously been around women, babies and women while they're pregnant. I've seen dead fetuses too. If she knew it was a girl, she was probably around 14 weeks or something. They could've determined the gender after the baby's death and I'm guessing that's what happened. She had her own little girl that she lost…crazy, because she's so good with mine. "Well Jenna was a sucker for babies, so I can assure you if there is a heaven, your baby girl's got one hell of a mother up there." I feel her lips tug up onto a smile. Alright, enough with the heavy stuff tonight. I stroke my hands across her back and she turns her head so that she's watching the movie even though she's laying on my chest. "…Your hair smells good."

She laughs. "Thank you. It's called Suave…and it comes in a gold bottle." Her hands are against my chest and I can tell that she's comfortable, which is good because I'm comfortable too. I run my fingers through her hair, smelling it as it kicks up air when it flops back down on her back. Her hair smells so good. "It needs colored and cut again. But I'm glad it smells good…at least it smells good." She has such silky hair. "My friend Lucille gave me the address to this place so I can get my hair cut."

"Is this the longest you've ever let it get?" I run my fingers down the entire length of it. It comes about two or three inches past her neck when straight but it's wavy now and it's just at her shoulders. She shakes her head to answer me. "It's not?"

"Huh uh." She shakes her head again. "I've only had short hair for two months, Alex. I cut it the day I moved here. I used to have real long hair." She lifts her head up. "My hair used to come all the way past my boobs, even when it was rainy. You don't remember my long hair?" She raises an eyebrow. "…I forgot I didn't know you back then. But yeah, I've only had short hair for a little while. I used to have crazy long hair."

"You're lying." I can't imagine her with long hair. I'm so used to seeing her with short, shoulder-length hair. She had long hair once upon a time? "I can't even see it on you. I can't see you with long hair." I shake my head.

"Mhm." She grabs her phone off the coffee table. "My hair used to be freaky long. I cut off my entire ponytail the day I moved here…here, I'll show you." She's scrolling through her pictures. "Here, look…look." She shows me a picture of herself. My breath is literally taken away for a moment. Oh my god, she's beautiful. She took a selfie in the mirror and she's wearing a light purple t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Her hair is LONG and it's thick. It's dark brown like it is right now and it's wavy. It comes way past her boobs and she was beautiful with it. I mean, she's gorgeous now of course, but she was BEAUTIFUL with her long, pretty hair. "See? Told you. I used to have a literal ponytail. Like a legit horse's tail."

"Why'd you cut it?" I stare at the picture a little while longer. God, she really was beautiful with all that hair. I think her shorter hair makes her look older, though. More desirable. "It was gorgeous."

"I wanted a new look. New me, new look." She shrugs and puts her phone away after showing me the picture. "Mark used to like to pull on it while we were having sex…I hated that though. I hate having my hair pulled, not just during sex but in general. I hate getting my hair pulled. And I figured…well I when I moved here, I wasn't gonna be having sex with anyone, so…why not cut it? He was practically the only reason I kept it long."

"Bummer. I like hair pulling." I stick my tongue out and blow a raspberry at her. "I like feet too…and legs."

"Ooh, I hate when people mess with my feet too." She shudders. "I hate that."

"…So if I stuck your toe in my mouth, you wouldn't be into that?"

"I might kick you." She lays back down on my chest and I let her. She mentioned that she likes arms. When we were down at Typhoon Lagoon in Disney, I told her that I was a huge fan of legs and she said that she has a fetish for arms. I'm only just telling her about my foot fetish though. It's not a legit fetish, I just like when girls have nice feet. I'm not the kind that'll actually stick a toe in my mouth. I'm not that freaky. I just like nice feet, that's all. Now legs? I love those. And Jo has some sexy legs too. I'd lick her legs from ankle to thigh. She has such sexy, long legs. And I like hair pulling too. I'm glad she mentioned that she hates it because if we were to ever have sex, I would pull her hair not gonna lie. Only if I was going at it from behind, but I would pull her hair nonetheless. I'm glad she said not to. "…Damn." She mumbles like she just remembered something; like she just remembered that she has to leave or something. She gently pounds on my chest to express her irritation. I sigh. She's probably about to leave. She sits up off my chest and looks at me like she hates me, with that same look of me being a nuisance that she looked at me with back at the restaurant. She rolls her eyes hard and scoots back off of me. I really wish she didn't have to—whoa. Her hands are at my sweatpants and she's untying the drawstrings that hold them up.

"What the hell are you doing?" I grab the rim of my pants.

She slaps my hand away so I move it. She lifts up my shirt a little and grabs the rim of my pants. "I lost." She mumbles.

"…Jo, you don't have to. It was a stupid bet." I stop her again. I mean, WOW. WOW. It's nice to know that she actually would, but she really doesn't have to. I thought she forgot all about that bet and I wasn't really expecting her to hold up to it. I thought it was just a joke. I wasn't really expecting her to do it. "You don't have to. It was a joke."

"No." She takes a ponytail holder off her wrist and ties her hair back with it. "Because if you lost, I would expect you to reimburse me. And if you lost, I would be all over you about it. A bet is a bet, we shook on it…and we kissed on it." She starts pulling my pants down but not my boxers. "If you lost, I would be on you the SECOND you lost. It's only fair." Is she really about to go down on me? She could've chose the other option! She could've just made out with me for seven seconds!

"…There's another option you know…" I try stopping her once again.

"Yeah and I can't makeout with you for seven straight minutes. I have to breathe sometime. Seven straight minutes of makeout? If I give you seven minutes of makeout…" Her voice trails off. "I just don't want to have sex tonight and that's where seven minutes of kissing you is gonna get me." She's for sure crazy. She's nuts. She stops for a moment and kisses me hard, tongue involved and all. Of course I'm not going to resist a kiss, so I put my hand on her cheek and kiss her just as hard. She brushes her teeth along my tongue every time I stick it in her mouth and god, that drives me wild. She straddles me and knots her fingers through my hair as we kiss and suddenly, she just pulls away. "…See?" She's out of breath. "That's as long as I can last…"

"…I'll call it truce." I kiss her on her lips once more. "…Wasn't seven minutes though…I want my seven minutes…"

"I can't give you seven minutes." She bites down gently on my bottom lip. "If I give you seven minutes…you'll have to give me all night." She kisses my neck for a moment. "And I'm a woman of my word. I lost the bet…" She kisses the corner of my mouth and from the corner of my mouth, she goes right back to taking my pants off.


	30. Feels Like

**A/N : Mature content in this chapter.**

* * *

My fingers slip from around the rim of his pants and I have to readjust. My mind is moving at a thousand miles a minute while my body is seriously lagging behind. I'm halfway between not knowing what to expect and being scared about what I actually might find. How big of a disappointment will it be if he's not exactly…big? But aside from that, what if he doesn't think I'm good at it? He obviously wouldn't be the first guy I've gone down on but it's still nerve wracking nonetheless to know that this is about to be my first time going down on _him._ I'm actually starting to reconsider. I think I might want to retract my statement and try the seven minutes of making out. The only thing about the seven minutes of makeout is that I know myself, I know my body and I know that if I makeout with Alex for seven whole minutes, things are going to get dirty. There's no possible way I can makeout with him for seven minutes and not end up wanting to have sex with him. I'm not ready for sex though so I really think my safest bet is to go down on him, even though I'm nervous about it. I'm not nervous about actually doing it, I'm more nervous about all the things that he could possibly think. He could think I'm sleazy for going down on him after knowing him for only two months, he could think I'm horrible at giving oral…there are so many things.

Personally, I don't think going down on a guy after nearly two months of dating/talking/whatever you want to call this is nasty, but everyone has a different opinion on things like sex. I don't really think that Alex would judge me. He's spent the better half of me beginning to go down on him trying to convince me not to. It seemed like he was just trying to make sure I didn't feel forced and I don't. I don't feel forced by this at all. I chose the punishment for me losing the bet and I wasn't comfortable with doing it, I would've never suggested it. Granted, back when I was setting the consequences, I thought I'd be better equipped to handle the seven minutes of kissing and honestly, going down on him was never truly an option. But with the way I'm feeling towards this man and the way he looks tonight, seven minutes of kissing is the worst option. But if I wasn't truly okay with going down on him, I would've never even put the thought in his head. I guess I'm just hoping that nothing changes after I do this. I don't want him to think of it as anything more than what it is. I'm only giving him head.

I wriggle his pants down just a little and come face to face with his boxers. His boxers are dark blue and they have two little brown buttons in the center. Just as I touch the tips of my fingers to the buttons, the room goes pitch black. He turned off the TV and thank the heavens for that. I kind of didn't want to see his face while I do this. I undo the buttons and take a deep breath. I need to calm myself down. I still don't quite know what I'm about to walk into with him. Back when we were still at Disney in the hotel, I felt it. It was when we were kissing hardcore for the first time. He got hard and I felt it against my thigh. When I felt it then, it didn't feel like it was small. It felt like it was an okay size but I'm just going off of what I felt. I didn't actually see it. To stall long enough for me to calm down, I put my hands on his sides and stroke them while I lower my lips down to his happy trail. Of course, his stomach is hairy, but it's really hard too. I'm a sucker for nice, washboard abs and he has them. Despite the hair, I kiss his lower stomach lightly at first. He smells good, like soap and cologne. I stick my tongue out and trace from the bottom of his navel to the rim of his boxers. Down below, a small tent-like imprint is made in the middle of his boxers which lets me know that he's hard. Since I'm a little more comfortable now, I slip my thumbs under the rim of his boxers and pull them down instead of going through the little hole in his boxers like I was going to. I have to pull a little hard to get the boxers down over his erection but I do and when I get them over it, it springs free and stands straight up.

Let me be the first to say that I was very wrong; so very wrong for making assumptions. He is incredible, to say the least—IT is incredible. Since it's dark in the living room, I can only see the outline of it. I can't see details but I don't exactly need to see details to know that he's the biggest I've ever dealt with. I wrap my hand around it at the base, it's so soft and firm. It stands at about eight or nine inches and it's so thick that it'd probably give a banana a run for its money. I take my hand off of it for a brief moment and tuck a loose strand of my hair behind my ear so it doesn't get in my way while I do this. It might sound strange given the fact that one, I'm talking about the appendage between his legs and two, I don't have a clear view of it since it's dark, but I'm still going to go ahead and make the observation that it's good looking; beautiful maybe even. Again, that probably sounds strange given the fact that I'm talking about his third leg, but I'm calling it as I see it/feel it. The fact that it's decent looking makes it easier on me. It would be about ten thousand times more difficult for me to go through with this if let's say, it was ugly, felt funny or was funny looking. I don't really think any kind of penises are exactly attractive; I think they're all pretty ugly. But for some reason, I don't have an issue at all with putting my mouth on his.

I moisten my lips with my tongue and lower my face down. I start with a soft, tender kiss on the tip and find that he smells like soap mixed with the natural scent of his skin. The fact that he smells clean settles me a little more and pushes me to stick my tongue out. I trace from the head of it down to the base with the tip of my tongue while I'm bracing it still with my fingertips and I feel him harden in my hand. Once I get to the tip, I shove it in my mouth nervously at first but when I slide it in further and further, the nerves go away and all I'm left with is the overwhelming urge—the want—to pleasure him. I hope he can tell that I wanted to do this. I don't want him to think too much into this and make this more than what it is, but I do hope that he can tell that this is something I wanted to do. Honestly? He can't force me into doing anything I don't want to do. I'm not easily persuaded and I'm not easily influenced. If I didn't want to do this, I would've dismissed the bet as stupid, asinine and I would've just told him no. Hell, I didn't even have to mention it. But I want to do this. I'm ready to be physically intimate with Alex, I really am. I've wanted to be intimate with him on more than one occasion. I'm just not ready for us to have intercourse yet. I wonder if he really did think that the bet was stupid though. For me, I thought the bet was us admitting that we wanted to eventually have sex with one another but take it one step at a time. I thought the bet was just a way for us to become sexual without it being awkward. I didn't think it was just a stupid bet. I took it seriously. I wonder if he really didn't or if he's just saying that it was stupid to make himself seem like he's not as sexual as he seems.

I tilt my head to the side run my tongue along the side of it while I stroke it up and down in a very slow motion with my hand. He rests his hands on top of my head for a second before taking them away and tucking them back behind his own head. The fact that he's squirming and can't determine what to do with his hands makes me want to smile but since I have him in my mouth at the moment, I don't. I hold him firmly around the base and tease my tongue along the tip as fast as I can wiggle it. He sucks in a harsh breath and when he exhales, his hand ends up on top of my head again. I stop prodding the tip with my tongue and cup my lips around it again. I start at the tip and slide it all the way in my mouth, all the way down to his balls. I rest my hands on his hips and bob my head on and off it at slow, steady pace. My eyes have finally adjusted to the darkness, so I look up at him as I'm sucking and see that his eyes are closed, his jaw is clenched and he's biting down on his lip. He's so sexy. I take my mouth off of it again and kiss the tip. With my hand, I hold it up so I can get to his balls. In the entire three or four times in my life that I've given a guy a blowjob, I've never had the guts to do anything with a guy's balls—not even to my husband. I wrap my hand around his shaft and jerk it up and down as I place a single tender kiss on his sack.

"Mmmm…" Both his hands make their way to the back of my head and he tangles his fingers deep in my ponytail. His grunt makes me roll my eyes up to the ceiling and take a breath of my own, it turns me on so much. I can just hear him grunting while he's lying on top of me and that alone makes me want to stop what I'm doing and lay on my back. His fingers trace gentle motions across my scalp and I feel the couch cushions shift as he tilts his head back. An unintentional smirk spreads across my face at his reaction and I stick my tongue out. I gently trace it in circles all across his balls then move to kiss the inside of his thigh. He caresses the back of my head with gentle hands but he's being forceful to let me know that he's appreciative of what I'm doing. For the first time in my sexual encounters, giving head is actually entertaining for me. Any other time I've done it, it kind of felt like a chore and I only did it to return a favor. This time, it's something that I wanted myself and it's pleasurable for me to know that I'm pleasuring him. I trace my tongue from his balls all the way up to the tip again and take it all the way in my mouth once again. He clenches his teeth together and grips my hair. "…Fuck." He mumbles.

Again, I'm starting to reconsider. I thought I wouldn't be able to handle seven whole minutes of making out with him but I'm starting to not be able to handle giving him a blowjob either. I'm starting to worry myself because I don't know that I'll ever get tired of this. I could be here all night if he'd let me…

And I wouldn't mind that myself.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Daaaddy…" The light is very bright and makes me buckle my eyebrows, even though it's dark amongst the back of my eyelids. You ever notice how you can tell if it's light or dark in your room even if your eyes are closed? If it's dark, the back of your eyelids are especially dark and if it's light, they're still dark but they're lighter than they would be if you were in darkness. "Daddy…" My hearing is just slightly fuzzy and my mind is pretty hazy, but I'm pretty sure I heard her call my name. I start by opening up one of my eyes and I immediately regret doing that. I close it back as the sunlight piercing through the blinds and the curtains behind the couch I'm laying down on nearly blinds me. I take a deep breath to mentally prepare myself for the opening of my eyes and when I inhale, something sweet and fresh-smelling fills my nostrils. I don't know how to describe the smell I'm smelling but I know for sure what exactly it is that I'm smelling…and my heart immediately sinks to the pit of my stomach. I move my arm and end up touching something silky and smooth, which brings my worst fears to life. I mouth "fuck" to myself and try to think of a way to cover this up but I can't. It's way too late to cover this up because I already hear her footsteps on the steps and I'm in deep shit.

With her arms wrapped around my waist and her head resting snugly in the middle of my chest, Jo is laying on top of me with a blanket draped across our bodies. She's sleeping so soundly that I don't even want to move and wake her up and she's holding me like her life depends on my body being up underneath of her. "Jo…" I whisper her name and tap her. Fuck, fuck, fuck. What am I going to tell Lyla? Because this looks bad. This looks really bad. "Jo." I call her name again and shake her this time. She groans and slowly lifts her head up but it's way too late for me to explain and have her jump off my chest and play this off. Lyla's already down the steps and I hear her footsteps nearing us. Fuck. This was NOT supposed to happen. Nowhere in the contract last night did it state that Jo was supposed to sleep over my house. She was supposed to go home but things got carried away last night and we started talking and I guess we fell asleep. This isn't good. This is not good. I'm in deep, deep, DEEP shit here. Still in a groggy state, Jo holds her head up and yawns before her eyes meet mine. When we look at one another, I give her just one look and she automatically knows. The color drains from her face and she looks like she saw a ghost. We're caught and we're in deep shit.

"Daddy? Daddy, I…" She's standing in front of us. She's wearing the same pink t-shirt I put her in after her bath last night but instead of the pink pull-up I stuck on her, she's naked on bottom. She has no pull-up on and she's bearing it all. Her eyes are completely locked on Jo and not on me at all and her lips are parted because her mouth is open since she stopped talking midsentence. "…Hi Doedoe." She raises her hand to wave but never fully completes the action. "Daddy, hows come you sleeped down heoh?" Her eyebrows are furrowing and they're telling it all. She's not happy with me at all. "My Doedoe have a seepover wiff you?"

"Yeah." I just go with that. Jo sits up straight and smooths her hair back so I stand up. "It was too late for Jojo to walk home last night so she just slept here." I grab my cell phone off the coffee table and check the time. It's 8:30 in the morning. "But now…she's going home. Aren't you, Jojo?" I turn and look at her. She's bright red and very embarrassed but she slowly nods her head. Something tells me that Jo doesn't like to lie. Maybe it's just Lyla she doesn't like lying to, but I can tell that she doesn't like to lie. She can't even speak. Her eyes are wide and still full of sleep but she's cognizant and fully aware of what's going on. I have to be at work at 3:00 today. Either I slept through my alarm to wake me and Jo up or forgot to set one in the heat of last night. I look back down at Lyla and I can tell that she's not buying this. She's glaring at Jo like she hates her. Her eyebrows are furrowed, her mouth is turned downward in a grimace and she's being very standoffish. "Ly, where's your diaper?" I kneel down beside her and try to get her to stop looking at Jo like that but she snatches away from me and keeps giving Jo the death glare. Jo bites her lip and looks away from Lyla and when she does, Lyla's whole face changes. Her eyebrows relax again and instead of looking like she might want to kill Jo, she looks like she might cry. "…Go get daddy a diaper, okay?" I put my hand on her back. Her lip pokes out and she looks like she's about to lose it.

"Lyla…" Jo pushes all the covers off of her and stands up but Lyla doesn't give her a chance to get over to her before she turns around and takes off up the steps. The last I see of my daughter is her naked butt running away from us. "Lyla, sweetie…" Jo starts going after her, but I grab her arm to stop her. I'll take care of Lyla. I'll go get her and I'll make sure she's okay. Right now, I think it's best if Jo just leaves. I don't know what just went through my daughter's mind and why she went from angry to sad but it clearly has to do with Jo and for that reason, I want her out of my house. "Alex, get off of me. She needs me…She needs me to explain to her. I…" She tries shrugging out of my grasp but I tighten. "Alex, lemme go."

"No Jo." I pull her away from the steps. "Look, I don't know what just happened and I don't know what's wrong with her but she's clearly upset and that clearly has to do with the fact that you're here. I don't know what's wrong with her but Jo, I need you to leave right now. I need you to get out of my house." I stand in front of the steps so she can't go up them. I feel horrible right now because this is literally all my fault. Everything that's happening right now is my fault. My fault because I forgot to set my alarm and my fault because I was weak and in my momentary lapse of judgment, I let Jo stay the night here. I really don't remember what happened after we did what we did last night but she stayed over here, Lyla walked in on that and she didn't need to see that. I need Jo to leave. I don't want her to go but if it comes down to Jo being here or Lyla being comfortable then I'm going to choose my daughter.

"Just let me…" Jo shrugs out of my grasp again and tries to get past me.

"GO, JO. NOW." I feel so bad yelling at her but I need to go and make things right with Lyla before I can do any patchwork with Jo.

"She needs me, Alex. Just let me explain, let me talk to her. Just let me talk to her, Alex…please." She's looking at me with the utmost desperation in her eyes. If she wasn't wide awake a second ago, she's wide awake now. The bottom rims of her eyes are sparkling up with tears and I can tell that she feels absolutely terrible. "She needs me to explain to her. You don't…you don't understand…"

I wrinkle my brow. " _You_ don't understand." I was going to let her go upstairs and see if she could calm Lyla down until she said that. Now she's making it seem like she knows my daughter better than I do and that doesn't set right with me. "You really think she needs you more than she needs me right now? You really think that?" She closes her eyes and I can tell she's fighting off tears. "You don't know her better than I do, Jo. So don't make it seem like that. Don't make it seem like you know what's best for my daughter. You're NOTHING to her, Jo. I'm her father and I know what's best for her and what I say goes. You don't know what's best for Lyla, I do. I've been her father for four years. You just waltzed into her life what, two months ago? You're way overstepping here and I need you to get out of my house right now." I think I said that nicely. I was polite and not too rude about it.

She bites her bottom lip, rolls her eyes around and that's when tears actually fall. She holds her face in her hands and takes a deep breath. "Fine, I'll go." She backpedals away from me. "…Please just tell her that I'm sorry. I…" She wipes her eyes hard. "I may have only known her for two months, but I do understand where she's coming from with this one. She feels like I betrayed her because of what she said…to Chloe…and she's—"

"Goodbye, Jo." I put my hand against her shoulder and push her away, softly. I don't want to hurt her but I need her to know that I'm firm about her leaving. She needs to go…at least until I figure out what's going on with Lyla. I just don't need her to tell me what to do with my kid. I don't need her to give me a full-detailed psychoanalysis of what's going on inside the head of my own daughter. I'm her father, I know what's best for her and I know how to handle her. Jo doesn't need to tell me how to handle my kid. She turns away and once I see that she's seeing herself out, I turn around to go find my daughter. "…I think sometimes you forget that you're NOT her mother, Jo." I take the moment to remind her that she's not Lyla's mother. She stops walking when I say that but she keeps on going. I think she does forget that she's not Lyla's mother. She's constantly overstepping and this time, she went way too far. I appreciate everything she does for my daughter and I'm so glad that I have her around but she went way too far with this one. She's not going to tell me how my daughter's feeling when she doesn't even know.

It's killing me to know that I just kicked her out of my house. Part of me wants to run after her and tell her that I am so, so sorry that this had to happen this way after such an incredible night but the better part of me is telling me to go find my daughter and make sure she's okay. This is all my fault and after I fix things with Lyla, I swear I'm going to call Jo and let her know how truly sorry I am. I'm just caught in the middle right now and I don't know how to juggle all of this. I think the best way is to handle the two of them one at a time. Lyla first and then Jo….and hope I'm not late for work in the process. I climb up the steps and reach the top just as I hear my front door shut. "Ly…" I call her name and head for her bedroom. She's not in here. "Where are you, Ly?" I check in my bedroom and she's not there either, which is a pretty dead giveaway as to where she's at. I walk over to the closet and pull open the doors. Sure enough, I see her naked butt facing me as she's laying down on the floor in the corner where Jenna's shoes used to be when she was still alive. This is the same place she went after Jenna's funeral, when there were a bunch of people in the house and she ran away. "…Can you move over so daddy can come sit with you?" She doesn't budge, all she does is sniff to let me know that she's crying. "Fine then." I get down on all fours and crawl into the small closet space. "You wanna talk?" I look around in here for something I can drape over her butt. I reach up and grab one of my long sleeved business shirts. I place the shirt over her naked bottom half and touch her hair. "You can talk to me, Ly…about anything you want."

"…I wunna talk to mommy." She sniffs again and by the tone of her voice, I can tell that she has a pacifier in her mouth.

"So pretend that I'm mommy. If I were mommy, what would you say?" I lunge to my left and wrap both my hands around her torso so I can pick her up. Her cheeks are all wet and she still has tears coming out her eyes. "…Are your feelings hurt right now?" She nods her head and lays down on my shoulder. I brace my back against the wall of the closet and sigh. "Why? Because you saw daddy and Jojo laying on the couch together?" She nods again. "Are you mad at daddy?" She doesn't do or say anything. "Are you mad at Jojo?" She nods her head. "Why are you mad at Jojo?" I start stroking her hair. "…What did you tell Chloe at your birthday party?" I think starting with that is the best option. If Jo so happens to be right about the reason she's upset having to deal with what she told Chloe, I owe her an apology. "Did you tell Chloe something? Because I think Jojo might've heard it…"

"…I telled Coey my wish…on my burfday candles." She takes her pacifier out of her mouth and that's how I know I'm about to get some serious scoop from her. "I wish…I wish dat me and Doedoe could be best fwends forever…and I wish Doedoe would be our new mommy. Not your geerlfwend daddy. Our new mommy…"

"…So you want Jojo to be our new mommy? You want Jojo to be your new mommy and my new mommy too?" She nods her head. "And you feel like by Jojo being daddy's girlfriend, she's letting you down about being your mommy, huh?" She nods again and sniffs. I crack a smile because that's such a little issue but it's a really big deal to her. She wants Jo to be her mommy and my mommy too? But she doesn't want Jo to be my girlfriend? It sounds to me like she's a little bit confused as to how this whole mother/father thing works. "…Well first of all Ly…Jojo's not my girlfriend. Jojo's my friend. You know how you and Jojo are friends?" She nods. "Well she's my friend too. She's not my girlfriend. And what you saw on the couch…that was just Jojo sleeping over, okay? That's all. It wasn't meant to hurt your feelings and I'm sure Jojo is very sorry for hurting your feelings." I kiss her forehead to let her know that it's okay. "And didn't I tell you that Jojo wouldn't make a very good mommy? Jojo makes a better friend than a mommy. But don't worry…if daddy ever was gonna get you a new mommy, I would tell you about it."

"…Will I ebber have a new mama?" She looks up at me. "Ebber? …Like Coey's mama? I wanna mama daddy…we need one."

"No, we don't need a mommy." Since she seems okay, I finally put her down and climb out of the closet. I pick her back up and take her to my bed so I can put another pull-up on her. "You know Ly, there are lots of different kinds of families. Some families have one mommy, or one daddy. Some families have two mommies or two daddies. Some families have a grammy or a pappy and some families have a mommy and daddy. You don't need a mommy, Lyla. Sure, it's nice to have one but you don't need one. And daddy already has a mommy, so even if we were to get a mommy, it would be a mommy for you and not for me. Grammy? That's daddy's mommy. And pappy? That's daddy's daddy. I already have a mommy and a daddy. So you know the way to get you a mommy?" I open up a fresh pull-up and stick her legs through it. "The way to get you a mommy is if daddy has a girlfriend and he marries her. That's how we get mommies. So daddy would have to get a girlfriend if you want a mommy, Ly. That's the way it works. You know how in Sofia the First…Sofia's mommy marries the king?" She nods her head. Don't ask me how I know about Sofia the First. I have a four year old and I've been watching A LOT of children's television lately. Plus, the kid explains it all in the theme song of the show. "And then Sofia has a new daddy, doesn't she? After her mommy marries the king?"

"Yeah. Sofia have new brudders and sistuhs too." She seems like she's in a better mood. "So if you get a geerlfwend…her will be my new mommy if her marries you?"

"Yep." I pick her up. What a way to start off my morning, right? So I've got Lyla down. Next up is to apologize to Jo. I owe her a big one. "That's how we get new mommies. But for right now, you can stick to just having a daddy, okay? We don't need mommies. Mommies are nice but we don't need them, right?"

"…So maybe Doedoe can be your geerlfwend if maybe you lub her daddy?" She's still processing.

"What did I just say, Lyla?"

"…We no need mommies." She sighs. On the bright side, it's nice to know that she'd warm up to the idea of Jo being my girlfriend if it ever got to that point between us. But all this new mommy talk is starting to bug me. We're still a long ways to go with finding someone that I trust enough to bring into this house and be a potential wife and mother to my daughter. Even if Jo and I get together and date and become boyfriend and girlfriend, it's still way too soon to even tell if something is going to work out. I can't say for sure if I'd ever even want to marry Jo and I definitely can't say for sure if she'd ever be good mother material for Lyla. She's shown me time and time again that she's great with her but there's a lot more to being a mother than what Jo does for Lyla. It's all very complicated, it's all very new and we don't need to talk about new mothers anymore because I still highly doubt that Lyla will get one any time soon. "…Daddy, I pee pee in the potty dis mornin'." She swiftly switches the subject as I carry her towards the steps.

"You did?! Is that why you came downstairs all nakers?!" She proudly nods her head. "That's so good, Ly. I'm so proud of you. Just for that, you can have anything you want for breakfast. Anything at all, tell me what it is. I'll make it for you." I put her down once we get to the end of the steps and turn on the TV for her. I catch a glimpse of the couch and immediately, I feel bad all over again. If I knew that Lyla was going to be such an easy fix, I would've let Jo stay. I thought I was going to have to go up there and console Lyla for hours and here, all she required was a hug, a kiss and an explanation. I should've let Jo stay. I shouldn't have kicked her out. I'm juggling everything here but I think the balls or the pins or whatever it is that I was juggling have all just came crashing down. I put Lyla on the couch in front of the TV. "Stay here for a minute, okay? Think about what you want for breakfast. Daddy has to go make a phone call." I pick my cell phone up off the coffee table for the second time today and head for the kitchen so I can call Jo.

I really wish this morning could've ended up better and I feel so bad for the way it turned out. I feel terrible for the way this morning went. Last night was incredible and this morning was so sucky. I really hope she can find it in her heart to forgive me. Jo's a pretty understanding person but I think I might be asking her a little too much. I just need her to forgive me for kicking her out and I need her to really try and understand where I was coming from. I just want her to know that if I had known that Lyla was going to be such an easy fix, I would've told her to stay right there on the couch and I would've been right back. She didn't have to leave. I really hope she doesn't feel cheap about what she did last night, especially after being kicked out after she did it. The way we ended up this morning is exactly the way I wanted this morning to be like. I wanted those kisses and cuddles the morning after with her laying on my chest. I feel so bad that our morning after was cut short and made extremely awkward. I feel horrible and I'll do whatever it takes to make it up to her. I'll return the favor if it would mean that she'd forgive me for acting so impulsively. I was going to return the favor anyway, but I'll especially do it now.

Last night was amazing, if I do say so myself. _She_ was amazing. For the record, I didn't actually think she was going to go through with it. I thought she was going to act like she was doing it and then end up kissing me for seven minutes instead. I thought she was just going to fake me out. It wouldn't have made a difference to me if she did it or not. I just wanted to spend time with Jo last night, that's all I wanted. I didn't care how we did it, I just wanted alone time with her. With that being said, I'm so glad she did. Of course, I'm no stranger to oral sex. I've given it and gotten it a lot in my 30 years. But mark my words when I say that last night was by FAR the best I've ever gotten. That woman had me groaning, which is something no other woman—not even my wife—has ever made me do. Most girls lose their technique and lose interest by about five minutes into it but she didn't. She kept going for almost half an hour and it was easy cleanup, if you know what I mean. She was so crazy with it too. One minute, she'd be all tender and slow then the next, she'd be all fast and deepthroating it. I thought it was hot the way she kept gagging. I started to push her away when I was about to bust but she wouldn't let me so I just did and she was cool with swallowing. She didn't even make a fuss about it, she just did it and that was it. She was real ladylike about everything too. She put it away for me after she was done, buttoned my boxers and pulled my pants back up. She fixed her hair afterwards because I messed it up by rubbing her head and stuff. And she kissed me and laid on my chest. I tried to switch her places so I could return the favor because after getting head like that, she needed payback. I couldn't just let her give me an amazing blowjob like that and not give her anything in return. But again, she was real ladylike about it and she told me that I didn't have to because she was holding up her end of the bet and she keeps her word so I didn't. She laid on my chest and we talked about her mom coming to visit once again and I guess sometime in that conversation, the both of us fell asleep. I even had dreams about that head last night, that's how mind-blowingly amazing it was.

I scroll through my phone to find her contact and tap on her name. I hold the phone to my ear and pace around the kitchen as it rings. I should probably take the call outside though. If we have a long talk, the words 'head' or 'blowjob' are bound to come up and I don't need my four year old hearing that. I glance at Lyla through the kitchen entrance and see that she's just sitting on the couch and watching Team Umizoomi. She'll be fine; I'm just going on the porch. I keep the ringing phone to my ear and head for the front door. As I get closer to it though, I hear a ringtone going off. Confused, I open the door anyway so I can go out on the porch. She's not answering. I step out onto the porch and I'm honestly shocked to see that she's actually sitting on my porch. She's sitting on the steps that lead up to my porch and her back is turned. Her phone is sitting on the porch next to her and it's buzzing like crazy from me calling her but she doesn't even budge to look at it. She's just staring blankly at the street ahead of her. "…Couldn't find your way home?" I say that softly, unsure of what her reaction is going to be. I walk to the steps and sit down next to her. She's stiff as a board but she has tears running down her cheeks and she's not even blinking. She's still wearing the same yellow t-shirt and dark grey sweatpants she wore all night so I'm just in saying that she probably didn't go home. Her hair is still in that same ponytail and her arms are folded across her stomach. I made her cry…and I hate myself for that. "I'm uh…glad you didn't go home." She remains still like a stone. "Are you not talking to me?" I watch a tear trickle down her cheek. "Jo?" She finally blinks her eyes and when she blinks, tears stream out of both eyes. "I'm sorry, Jo. Sorry that this morning turned out the way it did. And sorry for coming down so hard on you. I'm really sorry for that."

"I understand." She whispers then clears her throat. "Why you did it, I mean. I understand." She tilts her head up and looks at the ceiling. "Al—"

"Jo, there's no excuse for me doing that to you." I didn't mean to interrupt her, we just started talking at the same time and she stopped talking before I did. "But please believe me when I say that if I had known…" I'm a little ahead of myself so I slow it down and back up. "Lyla's fine. She just had a misunderstanding and she was upset and I took care of it and she's fine. She's alright. But please know that if I knew that she was going to be such an easy fix, I wouldn't have made you leave. I thought it was going to take more than that and at the time…I saw you as the problem. And I care about her a lot, you know? It hasn't been easy on her and the last time I saw her do something like that, she ran away from me. So I jumped into problem-solving mode and I saw you as the problem and I though the best thing would be to remove the problem. You have to understand that. You _do_ understand that, don't you? I didn't mean to hurt you."

"I said I understand." She sniffs, wipes her face and looks at me. It's scary how easily Jo can pull herself together. "I do. I probably would've done the same thing and in a sense, I was the problem. She trusted me, Alex…and then she comes downstairs one day and sees me laying up on the couch with her dad? I mean, get real. She's four years old… and after hearing what she said to her friend…I understand her completely. And I know that might bother you to hear me say that, but I do. I understand her…maybe not better than you…probably not better than you. But on a certain level, I do. I understand how betrayed and hurt she must've felt. She's four, Alex. She probably doesn't even understand, she…she's too young to understand everything. You don't have to apologize to me because I get it. I get it and I get you and I'm not mad at you for that. I get it."

"I knew you'd understand." I feel relief wash over me. I lean over and wrap my arm around her shoulder but she's still stiff and she doesn't hug me back. "…Something still bothering you?" She puts her head down. "…All those things I said Jo…all those things…I'm sorry." I try forcing her to put her head on my shoulder but she won't even let me do that. "…Is this about last night?" She scoots away from me. "Jo, you have to tell me what I did. I can't read your mind. Tell me what I did, what's wrong so I can fix it. I can't apologize for something if I don't know what it is. Just tell me so we can move forward."

"I don't want to move forward, Alex." She shakes her head. "I want to move backward."

"…If this is about last night Jo, I told you that you didn't have to do that. I told you—"

"It's not last night." She stops me. "I enjoyed last night just as much as you did, if not more. I don't regret last night, I thought last night was perfect. But this…this isn't." She turns towards me. "I think I'm falling a little too fast here and I really need to take a step back. What you said about me trying to be Lyla's mom—"

"I was outta line with that, Jo." I put my hand up to stop her where she's at. I think she's going to break up with me or whatever this is. She's going to tell me that it's over, that we're done and I don't want to hear that. "I was way outta line and I didn't mean that the way it came out. I meant it as in—"

"But you said it….and that means you've been thinking it. And I've been thinking it too." She looks me in my eyes and she's being really cool about this. "And you're right. I'm not her mother. I…I lost my own baby girl and I guess maybe…sometimes I try to fill that void with her and that's wrong of me and that makes me overstep. I don't mean to do it but I do and I think that's why. It's just…" She cracks a smile but I can tell that it's out of nervousness and for the fact that she doesn't know how to say what she wants to say. "Losing Mark…that was hard. But finding out I was pregnant and losing my daughter…that took a piece of me. That took a piece of me…a piece I didn't even know I had. And then it's like…Lyla…I guess maybe she makes me hurt a little less because it's like…I didn't get the chance to hold my own baby girl but I can hold yours. And that's probably overstepping and if it is, I'm so sorry. I don't mean to overstep and I don't want to overstep. It's not my intention to act like I know her better, act like her mother, act like I'm superior to you. I swear to whatever god you believe in Alex, I don't mean to. But I do." She shrugs her shoulders. "And I think I need to step back. I think this is getting to be too much for me. I don't think I need to date a man with a kid—or be dating period, actually. I think I went all the way in, way too fast with you and with her and I don't want to hurt either one of you because I…I just don't want to end up hurting you two. I really don't want to do that. I know what I can handle, Alex. And I can't handle this." She shakes her head. "I'm sorry, but I can't handle this." She starts to stand up.

I grab her hand and pull her back down. "Jo, no. No, okay? You don't get to hold onto what I said like that. You know how I don't get to feel guilty about Jenna dying?" She sighs. "You don't get to hold onto what I said like that. You put that out of your mind and forget I said that." She closes her eyes and sighs once more. "Look, I don't like it when people tell me how to raise her. It's the reason my mom and I don't get along and it's the reason I snap out at my dad 80% of the time. I don't like to be told what to do with her because I already feel like a shit dad, alright?" I finally just admit it to her. "But what I do know is that…two months ago...I didn't even know what to do with her. She wouldn't talk to anyone, not even me sometimes. I was clueless as to how to toilet train her, she was sucking on a pacifier, making me carry her all over the place and too shy to even look people in the eye. She would cry, lash out at me and ask to see her mother…I had no clue what to do with her." I lock my fingers inside hers and hold her hand tight. "And then she meets you. And then you came into our lives. And all of a sudden…She's holding full conversations with people, she went piss on the toilet this morning without me having to tell her, she hardly even thinks about her pacifier, she walked around Disney World without even holding my hand half the time and she made a friend, Jo. She made a FRIEND. And YOU did that. Not me, you. You did that. She understands death and she doesn't ask about her mom coming back and she's just…she's a lot happier. You think I did that? Because all this just happened in the last two months and you think I did that? You did what I couldn't do in four years, Jo. Don't you see that?"

She closes her eyes again and throws her head up at the ceiling. "Of course I see it, Alex. You think I can't tell the difference between her not being able to even look me in the eye when I handed her my nametag and her going off and making a friend at the pool? And I know I did all of that. I know I…I know I _mothered_ her. Which is why I can't keep doing this. I'm going all in and I'm afraid…I'm afraid if I go all in with you and all in with her, I'm going to drown. I'm barely floating here. I…I don't have a washing machine, a dryer, a couch or a kitchen table. I moved here with NOTHING. And I'm afraid that if I have something to lose here, I'll…" Her voice trails off. "I don't want to have something to lose. Lemme decide what I can handle, okay?" She stands up again. "I just want a break. I just want to take a step back and stall process. I don't want to move forward, Alex. I want to stay here. I want to stay right where we are. Maybe take it back a week or two? I don't regret what I did to you last night. I swear…If I knew I was going to regret it, I wouldn't have done it. I don't regret that so please don't think that me wanting to erase a few weeks means that I wish I hadn't done that because that's not what it means. It means that this situation is way too messy and overwhelming and I just want to back it up and move forward slower. I just wanna be your friend and watch Lyla on my off days. That's all I want to do. I don't want the kissing, the flirting, the betting, the blowies. I just want to be your friend again. Slower?"

"You're breaking up with me…" I don't know how she thinks this is going to work. You can't just pull out a blackboard eraser and magically wipe away feelings. You can't just take feelings away. How does she think this is going to go? "Super."

"We weren't even dating, Alex." She stands in front of me. "But…" She holds her breath for a second. "You should." I look up at her and wrinkle my eyebrow. My god, she's gorgeous. Those eyes and that mouth and when she smiles…I can't believe she's breaking up with me. I don't know correctly what to call what she's doing to me, but as far as I'm concerned, she's breaking up with me. What else can I call it? "You're ready…and I don't want you to be lonely." I roll my eyes at her and look away. "I'm serious. You're ready. You should date…be happy. Please? Be happy. I don't want you to be upset." I just look off to the side instead of directly at her. How can I not be upset? I was starting to fall for her. I was really starting to fall for her. I was starting to believe that I could love someone again, I could be interested and she breaks up with me. How can I not be upset? "…Call me when you need me to watch her?" I shrug my shoulders. She squats down on the step in front of me and forces me to look her in her eye. She closes her eyes and leans in to give me the exact same kiss that our first kiss was. No tongue, just innocent lip-to-lip. "I'll see you around."

Yeah, I'll see her around.


	31. Courteous

"Something bothering you, Jo?" Macy sits down on the stool next to me and starts helping me stuff the napkin holders. I can't tell if she's asking me because she actually cares or if she's just trying to be nosy. If you want the truth, then yes; something's bothering me. Something's bothering the hell out of me to be quite honest. Macy and I have never exactly been the best of friends. We're friends sure, but not the kind of friends that sit down during cleanups and bond over personal issues. The most I know about her is that she's got a boyfriend and they're engaged to be married. I don't know anything further than that so again, it's not like we're the kind of friends that sit around, eat chocolate and discuss our boy problems. If it were Lucille that I was opening with and she was asking me if I was okay, I'd probably spill my guts to her. But it's Macy, it's only my second outdoor shift today and I don't really feel like talking about it. So I finish stuffing the napkins in the napkin holder and shake my head. "You've just been really quiet lately. You were quiet all day yesterday and you haven't said a word to me yet this morning…you're not usually this quiet. Sorry to pry."

Normally, I would be bouncing off the walls with energy and full of excitement, despite the fact that it's only 9:30 in the morning and I hate opening shifts. I would be happy though, because today is my last day of work before I have a long stretch of four days off. But I don't really have a reason to be happy today. For one, my long stretch of off days are just going to be filled with dealing with my overbearing, overprotective, annoying, eccentric mother. And for two, I can't stop thinking about Alex. I really don't even know how I made it through eight hours of work yesterday after I ended things with him but somehow I did and when I went home after work last night, that's when everything started setting in. I know why I did what I did and I think my logic is pretty solid, but that doesn't mean that I'm not hurting. I'm hurting bad right now. I think I was able to make it through work yesterday simply because it was fresh and the things he said to me were still fresh in my mind, making it easier to believe that what I did was the right thing to do. I still believe that I did what was in the best interest for myself, but it hurts like hell today even worse than it did yesterday. It stung yesterday…but today, it's a full-blown ache in the pit of my stomach. I truly don't know how I'm going to make it through eight hours of work today when I feel this horrible.

I literally feel sick. My chest hurts, I have no appetite and I can't find any motivation whatsoever to do anything. I couldn't even motivate myself to get my ass out of bed this morning. I was almost late for work because when my alarm went off at 7:00, I reached over and pushed "snooze" five different times. I didn't keep pushing the snooze button because I needed more and more sleep, I kept pushing the snooze button because I literally couldn't motivate myself to get out of bed. There will be times when I don't think about him but those are very few and far between. I know I did the right thing. I know for a fact that what I did was right and I don't regret doing it, I just wish I didn't have to. I just have to start thinking about how to take care of myself. I have to start doing what's right for me and deep down, I know that ending things with Alex is what's right for me in the long run. Ending things yesterday was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, which is why I couldn't hold back tears while I was doing it. It was so hard for me to walk away from him, away from something that felt so good. I haven't felt that good in a long time, either. Being around Alex made me feel something that I haven't felt since Mark died. It's almost as if I had a light in my body. A light that Mark's death turned out and for a long time, I didn't quite know how to turn it back on. But Alex…he did. He turned that light back on and I felt so good. Walking away from that was easily the most difficult decision I've ever had to make in my life and I didn't make it lightly. I didn't treat it like Coke or Pepsi, pepperoni or cheese pizza, McDonald's or Burger King. I did not make that decision lightly.

In truth, I had been thinking about stepping back for a while. Ever since Lyla kissed me on the cheek back when I took her to the restroom at Disney World, I've been thinking about stepping back. I honestly had every intention on backing off from the two of them once we got hone after Lyla kissed me. Then something happened between me and Alex where he kissed me all over my body and in the back of my mind, I still thought it'd be best if I stepped away but when he kissed me like that, I didn't want to. I just thought "fuck it, it makes me happy and if it feels this good, it can't be wrong." So he kissed me and I didn't want to step away anymore, even though I knew that I probably should. So we came home from Disney and everything that happened between us on his couch took place and after that night, all thoughts about backing away were completely gone. In fact, the thoughts of backing away were soon replaced with thoughts of "what if." Like what if Alex and I tried dating? What if I was able to call him my boyfriend? What if we could make this work? To be honest, I prefer the thoughts of "what if" a lot more than the thoughts of stepping away.

Hearing Alex say what he said to me brought the thoughts of stepping away back and basically, hearing him remind me that I'm not his daughter's mother solidified everything for me. I used to be so careful with the two of them because I knew how bad it could've been. Lyla is the entire reason I didn't want to get involved with Alex in the first place, because I knew how bad it could've been for me if I did. I knew that getting myself involved with a man as attractive as Alex was bad, but add that to the fact that he has a baby and it's a thousand times worse, which is why I was so dead set on keeping things between us strictly friendly. I used to be SO careful and somewhere along the lines, I let my guard down and that's how I ended up sitting at the bar of my job, stuffing napkin holders and trying not to cry. I really thought I could do this but I can't. I was doing fine up until Disney. I was fine with hanging out with Lyla every so often and I was fine with basically being her nanny. I was okay with that. What I'm not okay with is getting in a sexual, physical, romantic relationship with her father. I'm not okay with that. Because being in a relationship with Alex isn't going to do anything but make me overstep the way I did yesterday.

I overstepped so bad and if I'm already overstepping, I can only imagine what the hell I'll be like if Alex and I were to start dating. When I say I used to be careful, I mean that I used to remind myself because I did. I always used to remind myself that I wasn't Lyla's mother and that kept me grounded. I kept telling myself that she wasn't really my kid and that's what helped me. The second I stopped telling myself that is the second I ended any possibility of having a relationship with Alex. I knew that being in a relationship with a man that has a baby could be potentially harmful for me but Alex pursued me. He pursued me, it wasn't the other way around. I knew from the start that it might've been something I couldn't handle but he made me think that it was going to be okay. I tried so hard. I tried to convince him to date other people, I told him not to lie down in bed with me when I had a nightmare and I tried to keep my distance from him but he did this to me. I shouldn't have let my guard down but I did and now I'm hurt. I'm hurt and I've hurt him and everything is just god awful now.

I was just falling way too fast. I was in too deep and way too fast and I slipped up and I overstepped and Alex called me out on it and maybe I'm just being a big fat sissy about it, but hearing him say that too me really hurt my feelings. I swear I know that Lyla's not my daughter and that's not what hurt me. And I know why he kicked me out. I know why he told me to get out of his house and I am in no way, shape or form upset about that. Truthfully, I probably would've done the same thing. If my daughter ran away crying after seeing me laying on the couch with a man, I would tell him to get the hell out of my house too. I'm not mad at him for that. Actually, I'm not mad at him at all. I'm just hurt by him. I'm hurt that he said it the way he did. He said it as if he's been waiting to tell me that for the entire two months we've know each other. I wish he would've said it sooner and maybe not the morning after I gave him oral sex. He made me think that my behavior was okay because he didn't correct me sooner. I told him how I felt about Lyla. I told him that I loved her and that I felt a special connection with her and he made it seem like it was okay. I take her to the bathroom, I wipe her butt when she goes, I hold her while she sleeps sometimes and she likes me just as much as I like her. If he ever felt like my relationship with her was inappropriate or disrespectful to him as her father, then he should've told me sooner. Not the morning after I basically sealed the deal on our exclusive relationship by sucking him off. If he had told me sooner, maybe I would've been able to step back sooner and it wouldn't have hurt him so bad when I did it. I think it stung him so bad because of what happened but believe me, if he would've said something to me about my relationship with Lyla sooner, I never would've gone down on him. I do feel bad about ending it right after I did that to him. I should've stepped back sooner and saved both of our feelings.

"Can you keep a secret, Mace?" I just need somebody to talk to right now. I won't tell her hardcore details or anything like that, but I just need someone to listen to me right now and maybe offer some advice as to how I should get over this. I neatly stand the filled napkin holders up on the bar and grab the keys off the hook on the bottom of the counter so I can go open the doors. It's 9:53 and the restaurant is supposed to open at 10:00. "Not really a secret, but…" I string the silver loop of the keychain around my index finger and look down at the neatly vacuumed carpets. "Just something between us? I don't really care if you tell anybody, I just…wish you wouldn't. So can you keep something to yourself?"

"Yeah, Jo." She nods her head and looks at me with careful eyes, as to answer to my observation from earlier. She really does care, she's not just trying to be nosy. "I know I'm probably not your first choice to tell all your problems to, but I'll listen and I don't judge, so…"

"I just…" I try to think of a way to make this complicated situation simpler. I don't really feel like going into details about everything, like the Disney World trip and the fact that I had a good relationship with Lyla. I don't feel like fully explaining things so to make a long story short, I simplify it with one basic sentence. "I broke up with my boyfriend yesterday." I loop my thumbs through the belt hoops on the pair of shorts I'm wearing and sigh. "How do you think I should get over it?"

"…Your boyfriend?" She raises one of her perfectly shaped brown eyebrows and tilts her head downward, which makes me want to crack a smile even though this is supposed to be a solemn moment for me. I feel my cheeks redden as I blush and fight off a smirk. "I thought you were single, Jo. That's what you told all of us." She folds her arms and tosses her fiery red hair over her shoulder.

I take a breath and sigh again. "It was supposed to be on the down-low but…" I shrug my shoulders and roll my eyes. "I mean technically, we weren't even dating we were just…talking. Like I wasn't single and neither was he, but we weren't boyfriend and girlfriend. You know how that is. It was like the beginning stages of us becoming boyfriend and girlfriend so technically, he wasn't my boyfriend but yeah. Anyway, I broke up with him yesterday. We just…weren't seeing eye-to-eye, I guess. And I'm kind of upset about that." I flip my own hair over my shoulder. "So I don't know how to like…get over it."

"So wait…Jo, you were dating ALEX?" She's still processing and I guess she's justified in doing so. I kind of just dropped a bomb on her, knowing how everyone in this restaurant feels about him. Everyone here worships the ground Alex walks on like he's a god or something and this just in, I was actually dating him…if that's what you want to call it. So yeah, I'll give her a minute to process the fact that I actually was "dating" everybody's dream guy and "the most eligible bachelor in Millerton." With my head positioned down at the floor, I just nod. "You were dating Alex! Oh my god! Oh my god, okay so how is he? Is he a good kisser? Have you hugged him? And felt his actual…his actual biceps around your body? Is he good in bed?! Does he have a big…" She stops herself. "Sorry, I just…wow, you were dating Alex…"

I smirk at how excited she seems to be. It's kind of weird to hear her gush over Alex when to me, he's just a regular guy. Alex is just Alex to me, nothing as special as he is to everyone else. What I mean by that is that everyone else like Macy, Lucille, Kaylee and Luke…they think Alex is just a pretty face with a nice body and manners. And to an extent, that is Alex. His face is very fun to look at, he has a beautiful freaking body and although he can be an asshole at times, he's very gentlemanlike. But that's all they know about him and that's all they get to know about him. They don't see the side of Alex I saw, the side of Alex that I was slowing falling for. Maybe that's why he liked me, because he was never something to gawk at for me. I always treated him like a regular guy while everyone else treated him like a piece of meat. I clear my throat and decide to start talking to Macy before she has an aneurysm trying to figure out all the answers to the questions she just asked me. "He's a very good man, for one. And yeah, he's a good kisser." I nod. "I've hugged him, sure. Haven't had sex with him so I don't know how he is in bed, but yes…he has a big dick." I cross off her questions one by one. "Now back to—"

"So how do you know he has a big dick if you've never slept with him?" She takes the keys off of me and walks towards the front of the restaurant so she can open the door. I follow her so that we can continue our conversation. "If you slept with him, you can tell me Jo. I'm already keeping the fact that you dated the man a secret, might as well let me know if you did the deed. I won't think any less of you if you did." She shoves the key into the lock and turns it. "Lord knows I would, so I'm not gonna think bad about you if you did."

"I didn't have sex with him. I…" I take the keys back off of her so I can hang them on the rack again. "I went down on him, that's how I know. But Macy, seriously…I came to you for advice, not to spill everything. I need to know how to not think about it because I don't think I'm gonna make it through work today if I think about it so PLEASE Macy…help me out here?" I sit back down on the bar stool and patiently wait for two things. One, I wait for a customer and two, I wait for Luke and Lucille to come in. Luke doesn't come in until noon but Lucille will be here at 10:30. Opening is the most boring thing. Basically, all we do is get things ready for the day and then sit on our asses and wait for this place to come alive, which usually doesn't happen until around noon. "I'm a mess right now." I sigh.

"Well…" She walks over and sits down next to me. "Usually when my fiancé and I fight…I just invest myself in the work. I know us fighting doesn't really compare to you breaking up but I think it hurts the same. So usually, I just take the time away from him as a cool off period. I don't ever come out of an argument thinking that we're over. Maybe you shouldn't come off of whatever made you break up with him thinking that you're over forever. Maybe you should just take it with a grain of salt and use this as a break and not necessarily as a breakup. You know? You should go see him later and tell him that you did some thinking and you can work past this. And even if you don't think you can work past it, you should still just tell yourself that. It'll save you a whole hell of a lot of heartache. Just tell yourself that everything is gonna be okay. That should get you through the day."

"Thanks Mace." I take a breath and move my hair away from my face. I think she might've just saved my life. I work until 5:00 today and when I get off, I need to go home and clean up my house a little bit more so my mom doesn't bitch and complain when she steps foot in it and then I'm free for the rest of the night. I'm not exactly sure if and what time Alex works, but I'll stop down his house when I get off anyway. Maybe I can just tell him that I'm sorry and I hope he'll give me—give _us—_ another chance. I still think I did the right thing by ending it between us but I think I might've jumped the gun a little bit by completely breaking it off. I should've just asked him if we could slow things down, not just be friends. I still think I'm right for stepping away but I might've been a little bit wrong for COMPLETELY stepping away. I could've just asked him to move slower. I think I might've just found a solution. I can just ask Alex if we can start…dating or whatever again, but taking things a little slower. Like maybe we can go on actual dates and out to eat and stuff. And maybe it'll work this time. "…We should probably start putting the menus out."

"Yeah." Macy follows my lead and gets up off the bar stool she's sitting on to help me put the menus out. "So did you swallow?"

"Macy…"

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"So…kid in bed two crapped all over himself and I cleaned it up for you. You should kiss my feet and be eternally grateful." I hand her the chart and point to the kid's name so she can tell which one I'm talking about, just in case she's confused by "kid in bed two." She playfully rolls her eyes at me and snatches the chart out of my hands. She's letting me off early today because I have plans for after work. Granted, I get off at 3:00 and my plans aren't until 4:00 but she's letting me off at 2:30 so I have enough time to go home and get ready, which is just another reason why Arizona Robbins is literally the best boss anyone could have. In no way, shape or form do I need to get off at 2:30 to be ready at 4:00 but I'm just gonna go with it. Of course I'm not gonna tell her no. She just offered to let me off half an hour early WITH pay. Why would I say no to that? "And I admitted Taylor Davidson…kid that swallowed the Monopoly pieces? His parents have been waiting for them to pass for like seven days or something like that. I've got Jacobs on it so again, you don't have to worry about that." I look over her shoulder to see what she's doing because she's intently staring at this chart as if she has something she's looking at. "…Am I still free to leave?"

"Yeah, yeah…go 'head." She shuts the chart off and puts it down on the counter of the nurses' station. "It looked like the Davidson kid's white blood cell count was elevated but I was looking in the wrong column. You can still leave at 2:30 if you need to." She plucks a piece of lint off of my white lab coat and smiles at me like a mother would smile at her son or something. "Where you taking her?"

"This place in Millerton. They've got real good food and good service so I just thought I'd take her there." I stick my hands in my pockets and try to fight off a smirk. I'm only smirking because she's making this awkward with the way she's looking at me and stuff. She's looking at me like I'm going to the prom and she just got done grooming me for hours or something in preparation for me to go. It's just a date with Stacy and we're only going to The Lobster Hut to grab something to eat. I asked her yesterday if she'd like to grab a bite to eat with me sometime and she gladly accepted. We had to negotiate the time though. 4:00 is a little earlier than I originally hoped, but she has a six year old and an eight year old and I have a four year old so 4:00 was the only time that really worked for the both of us. She still has to be home in time to get her boys bathed and to bed and I have to be home in time to get Lyla ready for bed too. So even though 4:00 is a little bit early, it's the only time that worked for the both of us. I'm not sure how this whole dating thing is going to work and how it's going to turn out but I guess you could say that I'm somewhat excited. I was talking to Stacy for a little while yesterday and she really seems like a cool girl. I'm just excited to talk to her more than anything; I kind of just want to spend the first couple dates getting to know her. That is…if the first date goes well and warrants a second one. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"No reason." She pinches my cheek and grins at me. "Look at you, getting back out there on the dating scene…and with Stacy, too. She was always my favorite scrub nurse. You picked a good one." She pats my shoulder. "Can't wait to hear all about it tomorrow."

 **X X X**

I pick up the soft-bristled brush and smooth my hair forward with it. It's been years since I've gone on an actual date with a woman so I hope I'm not underdressed. I know for a fact that I'm not overdressed, it's underdressed that's the issue. I told Stacy to wear something casual because The Lobster Hut isn't a fancy pants restaurant where she has to get all dolled up and wear a dress with high heels. I threw on a pair of nice dark blue jeans and a dark green, long sleeved t-shirt. I drove past The Lobster Hut on my way home and remembered that they have their outdoor patio open for dining so I think I'm gonna try and get an outside table, which is why I opted to wear long sleeves. I had known Jenna for a very long time before we decided to get married and stuff. We were together since we were 16 years old, on and off. I've had lots of girlfriends in my day but none of them stuck like Jenna did and that's why we always found our way back to each other. My point is, it's been a very long time since I've had to romance another woman on a date and I hope I still got it. I used to be real good at dating. I used to have girls begging for a second date. I hope I haven't lost it over the years.

I put the brush back down on the edge of my sink and pop another Altoid mint in my mouth. I've been going through a mint a minute, I swear. I just want to make sure my breath doesn't smell because that's one way for sure I won't get a second date. I lift my arms up and check in the mirror to see if I have sweat stains underneath my armpits. I put about a gallon of deodorant on after I got out the shower so I'd better be dry as a bone. I put my arms down and turn off the bathroom light. I go back to my bedroom and take my cell phone off the charger. I shove it in my back pocket and check the time on my cable box. I'm meeting Stacy at the restaurant at 4:00 on the nose, which means I'm going to leave the house at 3:50. I want to be punctual for the first date. I asked her for her address so I could pick her up and do this the old-fashioned way but she opted to meet me at the restaurant instead, which I thought was smart and really noble. Taking into consideration the fact that we don't actually know each other outside of work, I think her opting to drive her own car was smart. For all she knows, I could be a killer trying to lure her to a place so I could chop her up and throw her in the river. And if I had driven my car and picked her up, then she has no way to flee the scene if I get crazy and start talking about murdering her. That shows me that she's smart to drive her own car on the first date.

"Daddy…where going again?" Lyla's little voice calls out from the doorway of my bedroom and it's easy to see that she doesn't want me to go. I wasn't stupid and I didn't tell her that I have a date. I told her that I was going out for a couple hours with my boss to talk about something for work. My dad's downstairs and he's gonna sit with her while I'm gone. I tried texting Jo to see if maybe she wanted to watch her for me but she didn't text me back. She said that she wasn't mad at me for kicking her out yesterday morning but her ignoring my text says it all. I know she's not working today because when I drove past her house on my way home, her kitchen light was on. She's just blatantly ignoring me and I don't know what for. If anything, I should be the one mad at her. She's the one that broke up with me. I wanted to keep it going, I wanted to push a little further and try our hand at an actual relationship but she ended all of that and it's not my fault. I admit that when I asked Stacy out yesterday, I did it out of spite. I just asked her out in hopes of parading her around Jo and making her jealous but after I started talking to Stacy, it turned away from that and went into me just really wanting to get to know her. Stacy seems really cool and I'd like to believe I would've asked her out anyway. Besides, the hurt from what Jo did to me is gone. It still stings a little bit…especially when I think about how hard she used to make me laugh…but it's gone. It's whatever now. She claims she still wants to be my friend but she's ignoring my texts and that says it all. It's not like we were ever something serious anyway. She led me on and I think that was a pretty lowlife thing for her to do so honestly, any respect I had for her is slowly dwindling away. "You goin' to work?"

"Something like that, babe." I stuff my hands up underneath her armpits and pick her up. "But I won't be gone for as long as I'm gone for work." I put her down on my bed and pucker my lips. "Gimme a kiss." I can't spend too much time up here hanging out with Lyla because if I spend too much time with her, I'll start feeling guilty and I won't go on my date at all. I already feel guilty but if she starts looking at me with those puppy dog green eyes, I'll melt and end up calling Stacy and telling her that I cancelled. I just walked through the door at 3:00 and now I'm turning around and leaving right back out of it. I barely saw her because when I walked through the door, I decided that I needed to shower because I smell like blood and bandages and I showered, got dressed, got myself ready and now I'm about to leave again. She puckers her lips too and pecks me on mine. "You want daddy to bring you something back from the restaurant?" She shakes her head and looks down. "…Are you sad? Is that a frown I see?" I tilt my head to the side and kiss her on her cheek. "Can I get a smile before I leave?" She keeps her head facing down at the ground. "Alright." I pick her up again and leave out of my bedroom with her.

"Daddy, maybe I could see my JoeDoe today…if her not busy." She lays her head down on my shoulder and sighs. It's statements like that that make me want to kill Jo for doing this to her. She can be mad at me for kicking her out all she wants but how dare she turn her back on Lyla. I don't know what kind of internal struggle she's facing right now and frankly, I don't give a damn. When it comes to her hurting my daughter, she better make up her goddamn mind because Lyla can't keep going through this. She can't just keep getting close to womanly figures in her life and then having them snatched away from her. She loved her mother for three years of her life and her mother died. She loved her grandmother for three years of her life and her grandmother turned out to be a bitch. And now, she refers to Jo as her best friend and all of a sudden, Jo decides she doesn't want to be in her life anymore? And this is the fourth or fifth time in two days that Lyla's asked about her. She asked if she could walk down and see "her Jojo" yesterday, after she broke up with me. She's been asking about her and up until now, I've been telling her that she can see Jojo soon but now, I'm not so sure if she'll ever see her again. She can't just pick and choose when she wants to come and go from my daughter's life. She can do it to me all she wants but she can't do it to Lyla. I won't let her. Jo's not the one that has to look a disappointed four year old in the eye every time she asks to see her. "You fink her busy daddy?"

"I don't know what Jojo's up to these days, Ly." I'm gonna walk down Jo's house after I get home from being with Stacy and give her a piece of my mind. She has to know that she can't do this. Like I said, I don't know what kind of internal struggle she has going on but she needs to snap out of it and get it together. Now I admit…what I said to her was out of line. I didn't mean to snap at her and I certainly didn't mean to address that type of issue in that type of manner. There were more tactful ways I could've addressed that and none of them were in that hurtful of a manner. Truth be told, I think she's perfectly justified in thinking and feeling like she's Lyla's mother. Honestly, she's the closest thing to a mother the girl's got. She taught her how to use the toilet for god's sake. She's NOT Lyla's mother but she's the closest thing to one she's got and I was way out of line for saying that and suggesting that she's anything less than just a family friend. I'm partially at fault for what happened. She led me on but I led her on to. I led her to believe that what she was doing with Lyla is okay and then I snapped at her for it and that's my fault. I tried to explain to her that what she's doing with Lyla truly IS okay because it is. It's fine. She's just acting as a female role model and a mother figure to Lyla and I don't have a problem with that. I apologized for everything and she's still being hostile. She can be mad at me but she's NOT going to do this to my daughter. I refuse to let her. "Maybe you can talk to Jojo tomorrow. Let daddy see what's going on. She's been busy for a while."

"Okay daddy." We get to the bottom of the steps and I walk her over to the couch where my dad is sitting. She climbs off of my hip and sits down next to my dad. "Pappy, I pay wiff your hair?"

"Yeah, in a minute." My dad stands up from the couch and motions with his head for me to step out of the room. I nod and slowly turn around because whatever it is that he wants to talk to me about, he clearly doesn't want Lyla to hear about it so in order to keep her from wanting to follow us, we have to walk slowly. "You just heading down to the Hut?" He reaches in his back pocket and pulls out a green carton of cigarettes. I agreed to let him smoke in the kitchen as long as the door is open, Lyla's not around and all the smoke is going out of the front door. "Don't worry 'bout bringing her anything home. I'm gonna order something and I'll feed her. I'll probably have her bathed up by the time you get home too." I stand back as he sparks up his cigarette because I don't want to smell like smoke when I'm getting ready to go on a date. "You're going down to the hut…is she working?"

"I don't think so, no." I sigh. "She didn't answer my text, but when I drove past her house, the light was on. So I'm pretty sure she's home and not at work." I know Jo's not working, but even if she was, I'd still take Stacy to the Lobster Hut. I know it'd be courteous if I didn't go, for the fact of rubbing my new date all in Jo's face but I don't really care. She wasn't courteous when she broke up with me after going down on me, she wasn't courteous when she chose to ignore my text messages and she sure as hell wasn't courteous when she decided to stop seeing my four year old. Why should I be courteous to her? I wouldn't request her though. That would be flat out rude. "I'll be home later, pop."

"Alright…take care. And treat her right, son." He smacks my shoulder in a loving gesture and holds the door open so he can continue smoking his cigarette. My dad was even more disappointed than I was when I told him that Jo broke up with me. My dad adored Jo. When I dropped Lyla off at his house before I went to work yesterday afternoon, I told him about it then and he looked as if he was just personally broken up with himself. He was so upset. He'll get over it though.

I'm getting over it.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"You have a nice night." Like a good little waitress, I start piling the empty glasses and plates up on my tray so I can take them away as the family that just got done eating starts to leave out of the door. They didn't leave a tip on the table so I'm hoping they left me a charge tip because I busted my ass for those people. I was so nice to them even though I didn't want to be. Their bad ass kids smeared mashed potatoes all over the table and the baby kept throwing shit all over the floor. They better have left me a charge tip for everything I did. I carry the full tray over to the door that leads back inside of the restaurant and rest my backside against it so I can push it open. "Would you like more lemonade, honey?" I ask the little boy sitting at the table next to the door with his grandmother. He nods his head just as he finishes dusting off the last sip. "Alright, I'll be right out with it." I push the door open with my butt and go right back into the heavenly breeze of the air conditioning system. I like working outdoor tables and all but it's so stifling hot out there today. I feel like I'm going to melt in a puddle of sweat. "Hey Austin, table 63 is clear, get a busser for me." I tell Austin the host and take the dirty dishes back to the kitchen. "Here Morg." I hand Morgan the tray of dirty dishes and dash out of the kitchen so I can get another lemonade. It's really busy today and this girl named Jada was a no call, no show so I'm the only one on outdoors. I mean, it's more money for me to not have to split my sections with her but I've been running around like a maniac since about 1:00, after my break. It got super busy during the lunch rush and it hasn't slowed down since. I grab another red plastic cup from the pile of clean ones and fill it up with ice.

"Hey Jo, you have a table out there that was just seated…Austin just filled 60!" Bethany screams at me from the bar and I just roll my eyes at her. As if I don't know to go outside and check on my tables? I've been working here for two months and Bethany refuses to stop viewing me as the new girl. She treats me like I'm freaking incompetent and it makes me want to slap the taste out of her mouth at times. I don't even acknowledge what she just said to me and continue filling the cup with lemonade. I leave out from behind the bar and hurry back to the patio. The patio is a really nice place to eat. It's netted so that flies or mosquitoes don't interfere with the guests' eating. Lights are hanging from the ceiling and there are ceiling fans all over the place to keep it cool. There are speakers on the walls that play the same music that plays on the inside and it's just really nice. "Here you go, sweetheart." I hand the little boy his drink and with his little pipsqueak voice, he gives me a "thank you". His grandmother gives him a sweet look. "You're welcome honey." I reach in my apron for my notepad. "Would you two like some dessert or something?"

"No thank you, dear. He's had enough to eat." The grandmother speaks for the both of them and reaches in her pocketbook. I have to go get them their check…right after I check on table 65 and meet with table 60. I have damn headache. I can't wait to get the hell out of here for the night. "Here you are, dear. I wanted to give this to you personally…" She hands me two twenty dollar bills. "Thank you for taking care of us so nicely."

"…Thank you so much, ma'am." I politely take the $40 and slip it in my tip pocket. "I'll be right back with your check." I give the two of them my most polite smile and turn to leave. I really wish I could stay and thank them further for the generous tip but I really need to go and get my other tables situated. I put my notepad away and scurry off to table 65. "How's everything around here?" The two women nod at me. I glance around at their table to make observations about their drinks and stuff they all seem pretty set. "If you need anything else, let me know." I turn around and head for table 60. I keep my notepad in my hand because table 60 was just seated and I'm going to need it. I'm still trying to get the table numbers down on here. I run over the numbers in my head and turn around the bend to get to table 60…and I stop dead in my tracks and close my eyes. He doesn't see me but I see him. He didn't request me…they would've told me if he did, even if I'm the only one working out here. Dammit. Of course. Because nothing in my life can ever just go easy, right?

I sigh hard and reopen my eyes before people notice me and think I'm a mental case. I tilt my head to the side when I look at him. He's wearing a green t-shirt and he looks really nice in green. He's really handsome. I was going to walk down his house and see him anyway after I got off of work, but there's still a piece of me that wasn't quite ready to see him yet. I haven't seen him since I "broke up" with him yesterday and I kind of wasn't ready to be thrust into this. I was going to be able to see him when I was ready to see him but now all of a sudden, I'm just thrust into seeing him and that drives me crazy. He's leaning against the table and smiling. He's smiling at someone? I finally tune into his surroundings because honestly, I wasn't paying attention to anyone but him. If I had been paying attention, I would've noticed that he's with someone. He's with a _woman._ She has tousled brunette hair that falls just slightly past her shoulders and very sun-kissed tan skin. I can only see the back of her head though. I feel like somebody punched me in my stomach. Why would he do this to me? Is he really that mad at me that he would…do this to me? I…I can't work. I can't even think, move or breathe…why would he do this? I purse my lips together to hold back tears, flip my hair to pull myself together and proceed right over to their table.

My fingers tremble while I try to flip to a clear sheet of paper in my notepad as I approach their table. I think I might need somebody else from the floor to take this table. I can't do this. He's WITH somebody. I feel like somebody sucker-punched me in the stomach and knocked all the wind out of me. I clear my throat and stand right next to their table. "Hello, my name is Jo." I tuck my hair behind my ear and look at the woman instead of him because that's easier, believe it or not. She has really pretty hazel eyes and her nose is sort of large but she's not exactly ugly. She's not pretty either though. She has a weird forehead and her eyebrows are atrocious. But she's not ugly. "I'll be taking care of you guys tonight. Can I start you off with something to drink? We have Coke products and all our drinks can be found on the first page of your menu." I smile at her. I'm trying so hard not to look at him.

"I'll have a cup of coffee, decaf. And I'll have a Sprite along with that." I jot that down.

I bite down hard on my lip and reluctantly turn around to face him. "And you, sir? What would you like to drink?" I can see in his eyes that he wasn't expecting to see me but I can feel my own face fall when I look at him. I can't believe he'd do this to me. I mean, I knew he was upset about me ending things but I didn't think he'd do this. He brought another woman to my job, while I'm working, on a date. How could he do that to me? I don't think he realizes what he just did. I'm coming unhinged. I can feel my seams ripping, I'm falling apart. I've been trying to be so nonchalant about all of this but in reality, I'm losing my mind and he's contributing to it. I feel like somebody took a football and beamed it right at my face when I wasn't looking. Blindsided, embarrassed, humiliated and oh so very hurt. His eyes soften when he sees that my own have tears welling up in them.

"I'll take a rootbeer." He mumbles and turns his head away from me.

"I'll go put these drinks right in…" I meant to ask them if they wanted any appetizers but I can't do this right now. I turn around and make a beeline for the door. I've never been so humiliated and embarrassed and hurt…I'm so stupid. How stupid am I?! I mean seriously. I was gonna go down his house and apologize later and ask him if he wanted to reconcile and maybe try this again and he's already on a date? I head straight for the bar. I go towards the register first because I have to get that nice old lady and her grandson their check. I punch in everything they ordered so it'll calculate their total.

"Touch screen acting up?" Lucille stands next to me and questions why I'm pressing on the screen so damn hard. I didn't even realize I was doing it. I'm just pissed off and sad and I'm just a big mess of emotions right now.

"Yeah." I lie and rip out the white receipt it prints out. I push past Lucille and go towards the soda machine so I can get Alex and his little girlfriend their drinks. I snatch a plastic cup up off the pile and slam it against the ice maker. I fill it up with rootbeer and slam it on an empty tray. I make my way to the coffee maker and snatch up a mug. When I push the button to dispense the coffee, nothing comes out and that sets me OFF. "Who didn't refill the fucking coffee machine?!" I push the machine up against the wall and send the pot crashing down to the floor. "I'm the only person that ever fucking—"

"…Jo, go take a break. I don't know what's going on with you and I don't care. But I like you…I really like you and I want to see you back here…I don't want to see you get fired. So please…go take a break." Lucille puts her hand on my shoulder. "…What are your tables? I'll cover for you. Go take a break. Macy's out in the back. Go sit with her…" I can't believe I just blew up like that. I was already pissed off and upset and I just flipped. "…Go outside, Jo." She puts both her hands on my shoulders and guides me to the back door. "Come back when you're feeling okay…alright?"

I just storm away and head for the back door. I can't believe Alex did that. I thought we were on okay terms. I know I broke up with him and I know I hurt him but I really thought we were on okay terms. I thought he was okay with just being my friend. I'm not mad or upset that he's dating…I just…why did he have to do that? I told him to start dating. I'm glad he's dating. But he didn't have to bring her here. Of all places…he could've taken her somewhere else. It's like he wanted to see me break down. I wipe the little bit of tears that have fallen and make my way over to Macy, who's sitting down on the sidewalk out back and smoking a cigarette. I'm pissed off. I'm so pissed off right now. How could he?! Macy looks up at me and blows out a huff of air. "…Hey Jo, what's up?"

I bawl my hands up into fists to cope with my anger and sit down next to her. So he's dating, whatever. I don't care. I TOLD him to date. I said it. I told him that he could date and I DON'T CARE that he's dating. But he brought her here on fucking purpose. I pull my knees up into my chest and rest my forehead against my kneecaps. That fucking jerk. To my JOB?! REALLY?! Just to rub it in my fucking face, right? Fucking prick. Really Alex?! I pick my head up and turn it towards Macy. "Can I have one of those?"

"What, a cig?" She squints her eyes at me. I nod my head, ashamed. I need a drink, something to take the edge off. But obviously I can't drink anything so the next best thing… "I didn't know you smoke." She picks up her carton of cigarettes and hands me one.

"Not all the time." I take it off of her and pick up her lighter. I can count on one hand how many times I've smoked a cigarette in my LIFETIME, so I'm not a smoker. I don't smoke, I don't buy cigarettes but sometimes when I'm so stressed out I will. The last time I smoked a cigarette was in college, right after I failed one of my exams. I'll only bum a smoke from someone if I'm around someone that's smoking, it's not like a buy them. I light the cigarette and hold it to my lips and take a drag.

"I really didn't know you smoke, Jo."

"…Usually only when I'm stressed…or when I used to smoke weed…I'd have a cigarette after. I prefer drinking, but…" I take another drag. "It's not a habit and I'm not addicted." I rest my head against the bricked building and sigh. "…He's in there. On a date with some other girl."

"Really?"

"Yup." I take another puff of my cigarette and blow out the smoke. I can't even finish the whole thing, I just needed a couple drags. I snuff it out against the pavement and hand her the half-smoked cigarette. "Thanks, Mace."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"I had a really nice time, Alex." Stacy carries her takeout box as I hold the door for her. I'm glad she had a nice time because my time pretty much sucked. We had some pretty good conversations and I really, really like Stacy. She's a cool girl. We talked about a lot of things, mostly about work but some about our kids. She's really nice and by the sounds of it, she's a good mother. But ever since I came face to face with Jo like that, I've just been in a messed up mood. I made her cry, I know I did. Her eyes were all welled up with tears when I gave her my drink order and the next person that came out wasn't her. Someone else waited on us after that so I know she cried. She came back eventually, when it was time for us to get our food but still. She had to go away for a little while. I feel so bad about that. I thought I wouldn't care if Jo saw me with Stacy and I really thought it was okay that I brought her to the Hut. But when I saw her face…when I saw how deeply hurt she was…I instantly regret it. Now I feel like the asshole in the situation. I was mad at her, sure. But if I knew that her seeing me with Stacy was going to cause that kind of reaction, I wouldn't have done it. There's not enough anger in the world that's worth seeing Jo's face like that. She looked like I slapped her. I feel terrible. As soon as I get home, I'm gonna call her. I would stop down her house but I don't think that's a good idea.

I thought for sure she wasn't working. I feel so bad. I never meant for us to be seated in her section. That's torture for her. I didn't mean to do that. I feel like such an asshole. I need to apologize to her and I need to apologize bad. I hope she's not mad at me for actually dating though, she's the one that told me to. But if she's mad or upset about the fact that she had to wait on me and Stacy, then I understand that. God, this is just so messy between us. I want things to go back to the way they were two days ago. "I had a nice time too. I guess I'll see you at work tomorrow?" We stand at the steps as we wait to part ways.

"I'll see you." She smiles at me.

"Call or text me when you get home…let me know you got there safe." She nods and when we walk down the steps, we go our separate ways. She goes to her car and I go to mine. Now I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I want to have a date number two with Stacy but I don't want to hurt Jo anymore. I was immature for a second there. For a second, I wanted to hurt Jo the way she hurt me. She hurt me bad when she walked off my porch and told me that she'd see me around. And for a second…I just wanted to hurt her back. But seeing how I did hurt her…I never wanna do that again. I feel absolutely terrible. I feel so bad. I do that a lot though. When I'm feeling hurt, I just wanna hurt someone back. It's not the best coping mechanism but it's Alex's coping mechanism and it sucks. I really need to apologize to her and set the record straight. I think me and Jo just need to talk. About everything. About us, about me, about Stacy, about Lyla…about everything. I want to sit down with her and talk. I want to tell her that I'm sorry.

I just need to talk to Jo.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I've had a rough day and honestly, all I want to do is go to sleep. I'm over crying, I'm over being upset and I'm over being pissed off. I just have to accept it for what it is, I guess. He didn't have to bring her to my job and rub her in my face like that, but after all, I _did_ tell him to start dating. I made my bed and now I have to lie in it and try to sleep like a baby. It's my fault. If I wasn't ready to see him with another woman, I should've have broken up with him in the first place. I want him back…but if I lost him then that's my fault. I let him walk away. He realllllly didn't have to bring her to my job though, I mean what is up with that? He could've taken her somewhere else. He could've at least given me a week before he let me see that he's involved with another woman already. I pull back the blankets on my air mattress and climb between my sheets. I turn off my lamp and even though it's only about 9:00 in the evening right now, I'm going to bed for the night. Whatever, I just hope all of this can be over already. I want to go back to something like last month. When I was just being Lyla's babysitter and me and Alex were only friends. We tried having an explicit relationship, we failed and now I just wanna forget it all and be friends. I miss his friendship and I miss Lyla too. I roll over on my side and close my eyes so I can go to sleep.

Just as I get comfortable enough to fall asleep for the night, I hear knocking at my door. With a smile on my face, I roll over and climb out of my bed. I think it's Alex. He probably came to explain what happened at the restaurant and apologize for it. See, I knew he'd get it together. Now we can just talk and make all of this water under the bridge and move forward. He can say to hell with Stacy and I can say to hell with my feelings and we can just…be together again. That's what I want. I hope it's what he wants. I have to force the smile off my face and since it's only Alex, I don't even bother putting on a pair of pants. I almost run to the door and once I get there and rest my hand on the knob, I have to take a breath and pull my mind together. I want to disguise myself. I don't want him to know that I was practically waiting for him to come. I want to seem carefree and nonchalant, like I was just getting ready for bed and just so happened to open the door. I take a breath, unlock my door and pull it open. And of course…it's not Alex. Because my day isn't going fucking super enough, is it? It couldn't just be my Alex.

Instead, it's a woman dressed in a pair of baggy blue jeans and a red knit sweater. She has thin, curly brunette hair that's tied up in a high, side-ponytail and her front bangs hanging out. She's tall, thin and very lanky with cheekbones that mirror mine, eyebrows that mirror mine, a face shape that mirrors mine and eyes that are the same odd mixture of brown and green that mine are. "…Mommy." I reluctantly greet her. She wasn't supposed to be here until tomorrow afternoon. Fuck.


	32. Steady

I push the switch upward to turn on the porch light and hurry out onto my dirty wooden porch barefoot and all to help her drag her bags into the house. "What are you doing here? I thought you weren't coming until tomorrow…" I try to disguise the irritation in my voice because I really don't want to start her visit off with an argument. If she even senses the fact that I'm irritated with her being here a whole day early, she'll flip it around and make it seem like I'm the most ungrateful bitch in the world because she flew all this way just to see me. I've been dealing with my mother for 29 years, I've memorized all her speeches, whether they're "I'm disappointed in you" speeches, "I can't believe you" speeches or "I'm sick of the disrespect" speeches, I've memorized them all and I can give myself the lecture before she even twists her lips to start. The bags she packed are a little bit hefty for her to only be staying for four days. She has a total of four suitcases and they're all stuffed to the max. I pick up two and drag them into my house. "Did your flight come early or something?" I try to further sound as if I'm not at all perturbed and more so worried. Truth be told, I'm so incredibly pissed off that she's here already. I thought I still had another day. I still have a basket of laundry to put away, there are dishes in my sink and my bathroom is a mess right now. I figured I could get up tomorrow morning and do everything I needed to do before I had to go to the bus station and meet her.

"I just figured I'd come a day earlier and surprise you." Despite the fact that I have her bags in my hands, she steps right into my house and wraps her arms around me. I force a smile, drop her bags on the floor and lazily wrap my arms around her to reciprocate the hug. "Don't look so happy to see me, Jo." She lets me go and puts her hands on my cheeks. And so it begins. The nurturing, the coddling, the constantly touching me, the nagging me about my hair and what I'm wearing. I'm annoyed already and she hasn't even started. "I was thinking just yesterday about how four days with you might not be long enough so here I am." She unbuttons her red sweater and starts taking it off as I lock my front door again and shut off the porch light. Of course she thinks four days isn't long enough. She used to panic like hell if I stayed the night over my Aunt Shelby's for one night. I can only imagine what kind of torture she's imagining up for herself now that I'm 3,000 miles away. "So are you going to show me around or what?" She holds her sweater out for me to take it. She's already looking around the kitchen and making herself familiar with the place. One thing about my mother that I actually appreciate is the fact that I know she's not judging me. She wouldn't dare judge the fact that I live in a shack because believe me, compared to the one bedroom we used to share back in the homeless shelter we lived in, this place is a mansion.

"This is pretty much the extent of it." I take her sweater off of her and place it on top of the counter next to my stove as I turn on the kitchen light. I think my kitchen is the nicest room in my house, which is saying a lot considering the fact that I don't even have a kitchen table. It's just the only room I ever got around to finishing up painting. "This is my kitchen…in there is my sort-of living room…around the corner is my bedroom and through the door in my bedroom is my bathroom." I shrug my shoulders and lean against the counter, just looking at her for a moment. I haven't seen my mother in six months. The last time I saw her was just after I got discharged from the hospital following the accident. She had to go back to New Jersey and I was finally okay enough to walk around so I didn't need her to help me or push me in the wheelchair anymore, so it was a good time for her to leave. That was the last time I saw her. My mom is basically a taller, skinnier version of me. We look exactly alike, except her hair is a little bit lighter and she was blessed with naturally springy, curly hair while I was cursed with wavy hair. Also, my mom's a natural blonde. She's been dying her hair brunette ever since she turned 40, which was five years ago. I don't know why because if I were her, I'd appreciate the hell out of my blonde hair. She has the prettiest blonde hair and I always used to be so envious of it but she hates it and she'd rather be a brunette. Still don't know why. My mom is tall, she's around 5'9 or 5'10 and she's so skinny that it looks like I came out of her and not the other way around. If you saw her naked, you'd understand then. She has stretch marks and a saggy stomach from being pregnant with me but when she has her clothes on, you'd swear I had her instead. She's way flatter than me too. I hardly have boobs myself, but my mom is seriously flat chested. She always says the only time she ever had boobs is when she was pregnant and attempting to nurse me. "I was on my way to bed."

"Bed? It's not even 10:00 and you don't ever fall asleep before 11." She finally starts to take off her shoes. She puts them beside the front door next to my pair of sneakers and walks over to where I'm standing. She wraps her arms around my waist again and rests her head against the top of mine, which makes me roll my eyes. Another thing that I can't STAND about my mom is the fact that she's so friggin _cuddly._ She likes to hold me, play with my hair, kiss me, hug me, rub my back…ugh, it's so annoying. She's a total paradox of everything that she should be. I'm not saying that all teen mothers are clueless idiots that don't know how to raise their kids, I'm not saying that at all. But when you hear my mother's backstory, I swear you would expect her to be a little less cuddly and affectionate and more dense and hardened. She got pregnant with me when she was 15, had me when she was 16 and my grandparents let her stay with them while she was pregnant but as soon as she had me, she had to get out. My dad was never really in the picture much but he did pay a couple months' worth of child support at one point in time. Anyway, my mom and her newborn baby stayed with Aunt Shelby (who's not really my aunt, just my mom's best friend) until she finished high school since my grandparents kicked her out. You wouldn't expect a sixteen year old to have paid so much attention in chemistry class that she decided to learn how to make cloth diapers so her baby didn't get butt cancer from factory made disposable diapers, now would you? "Were you really headed to bed?" I nod my head and silently pray for her to let me go.

My mother and I look exactly alike but that's where the similarities end. She's cuddly, I am not. She likes to nurture me and coddle me, I hate to be nurtured and coddled. She likes to kiss me, I would rather not. "I still don't have a couch." I sigh and finally decide that it's time for her to stop hugging me. I was going to just wait it out and let her decide when she wanted to get off of me but I can see now that she won't be ready to let go for a while and I'm sick of the hugs already. I duck out of her arms and wriggle out of her grasp. "So you'll have to deal with sleeping with me while you're here." I move my hair out of my face before she gets the idea to move it herself. "I was trying to have a couch by the time you decided to visit but you know, you couldn't wait…" I can't help myself. I just had to get a jab in there to let her know that I reallllllly don't appreciate her showing up on my doorstep unannounced.

"Josephine, I'm only a day early. Don't tell me you planned on having a sofa by tomorrow afternoon." She snaps at me with a feisty tone and of course, goes over to my fridge. Now she's going to criticize me for what I have (or don't have) in my refrigerator. "You've really gotta cool it with the attitude. I'm sick of you being so… _attitudinal._ " She yanks open my fridge and looks around. Wow, mom. Attitudinal? You paused like that to find a word to call me and all you could come up with is _attitudinal_? Being that I was always a pretty smart kid, my mom learned very early that she has to keep up with me. Sometimes I don't mean to, but I often outsmart her or make intelligent comments to make her feel stupid. She always used to do what she just did. She used to say something, pause and try to think of a word that would be up to par with my vocabulary. My mom is not stupid by any means. She's a very intelligent woman, she could've gone to an Ivy League school herself. But she's not as high-level as I am and when I was a hormonal, bitchy teenager, I would always talk circles around her just to make it seem like I was superior to her or something. "Do you work tomorrow, Momo?"

I clench my jaw to literally bite my tongue. It's not enough that she wants to hold me and kiss me but now she has to start with the embarrassing names? "No, I didn't plan on having a couch by tomorrow afternoon. What I was SAYING is that if you would've waited until August like I originally THOUGHT you were going to, I might've had time to get a freaking couch." I don't even know why she calls me "Momo". She could just call me Jo. She already did enough damage by naming me JOSEPHINE of all names in the book for her to pick, she had to name me JOSEPHINE. Isn't that enough? She has to give me embarrassing nicknames too?

"You watch your damn mouth when you're talking to me, Jo." She chews me out for using the word "freaking", takes the package of yellow cheese from my refrigerator and puts it on the counter, along with a package of bacon. I should've known she was going to feed me. She always tries to feed me, no matter what. I guess I should just be happy that she's actually using something from my refrigerator, as opposed to a chicken she has to pull the feathers off or bacon that still has the pig's ass all over it. "What is your issue?" She grabs my loaf of bread and scoots the glass butter dish over towards her. I think I like that about my mom, but I'll never let her know that. I like the fact that she can make herself at home no matter where she is, and she can make any place feel like a home. She made that one bedroom feel like a home for two years and even though our first apartment after the shelter was a hell hole, she made that apartment feel like I was living in a castle. It was a one bedroom apartment so I didn't have my own room, but my mom still painted the walls pink and slept underneath pink Barbie blankets because I liked them. "I don't know what kind of child I gave birth to, but I swear you were never ever this hateful when you were little. I'm beginning to think I gave birth to the Omen or the Rosemary's baby."

I sigh and drag my feet until I get to the stove where she's standing at. She starts laying the bacon down in the frying pan on the stove and I can tell that she's really not too pleased with me. I know it may seem like I don't love my mother but I swear that isn't the case. I love my mother a whole lot it's just that she annoys me sometimes. She treats me like I'm still her baby when I'm 29 years old and that bugs me. Plus, she always tries to make it seem like I need her when I don't. It's nice to have her around but I don't need her hovering over me all the time. Still, I feel kind of bad for making her feel the need to call me the Omen or Rosemary's baby, so I drape my arm around her waist and since she's significantly taller than I am, I rest my head against her bicep. "…Whatcha making?"

"Your favorite." She lays four strips of bacon in the frying pan and wraps the rest of the bacon back up in the plastic wrap it came in. My mom taught me a lot about being frugal and stretching the pennies as far as they can go. As I've said before, we're not rich. We're very far from being rich and eating all organic foods can be expensive at times. But my mother knows how to turn four pieces of bacon into eight pieces of bacon, make two eggs stretch far enough to feed both of us plus second helpings and she knows how to turn two large chicken breasts into six chicken tenders that go well with fresh cut french fries. "You up for some bacon grilled cheese?" I nod my head and wrap my other arm around her to give her the effect of a full hug. "When's the last time you had something proper to eat, Jo?" I shrug my shoulders and watch her poke around at the bacon. "Your fridge is looking a little bare there. I'mma take you grocery shopping tomorrow…see about getting you some more furniture." She turns her head to the side just slightly and puts her lips to my forehead. I know better than to argue with her about going shopping tomorrow because she's not going to back down, so I just decide to leave it alone. "So what's going on?" She knows that I like my bacon chewy as opposed to crispy and crunchy, so she flips my two pieces over earlier than she flips hers over. She's able to work with ease even though my arms are around her and I'm hugging her. She used to do housework with me on her hip so I guess she's still used to that.

"Nothing…what do you mean?" I finally let her go and climb up so I can sit down on one of my countertops. "I…had a pretty decent day at work, if that's what you mean. I made $250 in tips." I start swinging my feet. My mother is living proof that things can turn around for the better. Now, Mrs. Robinson is the reason I ended up here in Florida but essentially, my mother is the reason I thought I could make it here. She was sixteen when she had me, still a child herself. Yet, she made a way to finish high school and put herself through college and she's doing well for herself. She had a job so I was usually in daycare or being watched by Aunt Shelby but still. She was sixteen, she made it through high school and college and we fell on hard times because it took her six years to make it through college but she's a teacher now and she's got a job for herself and I think she raised me okay. I'd never tell her this, but my mom is my biggest inspiration. "I kind of had a bad day, but I made decent money."

"Anybody call you back about getting a teaching job somewhere?" Since the bacon is close to being done, she starts to butter slices of bread for the grilled cheese part. "You applied to how many places? Four?"

"Something like that." I shrug. "But no, nobody's called me back yet." I start nervously pulling on my fingers. She glances over at me for a brief second, sees me pulling my fingers and turns her attention back to the stove. Sometimes I forget just how well my mother knows me. She knows I pull my fingers when I'm nervous or have to tell her something. "I guess the diner's been cutting it though. I make okay money. It's only three bucks an hour, but the tips usually hold up pretty well for me. On a good night, I could make close to 300 on the floor and sometimes when I'm bartending, I can almost double that. The customers like me, I think. I get a lot of requests." I watch her to make sure she puts two pieces of cheese on my bread. I won't eat a grilled cheese sandwich unless there are two pieces of cheese on it so I always watch my mom to make sure she fixes it the way I like it. I don't know why I insist on watching her because she NEVER forgets to put two pieces of cheese on my sandwich. I won't lie, I am kind of glad that she came earlier just because she's cooking for me. I was too upset to get something to eat at work earlier so I was just gonna go to bed hungry until she came. The smell of that bacon has my mouth watering now. "What about you? How are things going in Jersey?"

"Don't you worry about things up there, I told you everything's okay and I meant that." She tears my two pieces of bacon into four pieces and lays them on the piece of bread opposite the slice with the cheese on it. She puts the two pieces together and lays the sandwich in the frying pan. "But someone's bound to hire you. I'm glad you seem to be doing okay so far, but you can't live off of that. What are you gonna do when you have a car note to pay on? You're gonna need a car eventually, nugget. You can't stay at a little diner." She nudges my sandwich back and forth with a spatula. "But I'm sure you know that. Doesn't bear me repeating, does it?" I shake my head. She flips my sandwich over. "…So what else is going on? Isn't there a boy you should be telling me about?"

"A boy?" I slide down off the counter so I can grab us some plates.

"Or a girl…I don't care." She shrugs her shoulders and nudges the sandwich some more. "You know I'll love you no matter what. Gay, straight…" I fight back a smile. "There is a boy, isn't there?" I keep my mouth shut. "What's his name?" She takes a blue plastic plate out of my hand and scrapes my sandwich out of the frying pan and onto the plate.

"…Alex." I stand at the counter so I can eat.

"Alex? This is the same guy you took that trip with, yes?" She tosses her own sandwich into the frying pan and I can't help but notice hers is significantly smaller than mine. She's always done that. She always makes sure I have more to eat than she does and she always makes sure I get second helpings first. This time though, I think she made her sandwich smaller because she won't be able to stomach as much as I'll be able to. With her strictly organic diet, this sandwich could possibly make her sick. I take the first bite of my sandwich and nod my head as I chew. "Okay, and what about him? Is he nice? Is he cute?" While she's flipping her sandwich with one hand, she uses her free hand to pinch a piece of cheese off my upper lip. "Does he know that you come with a lot of baggage?"

I suck some cheese off the roof of my mouth and nod again, swallowing. "He comes with a lot of baggage himself." I put my elbows against the countertop and stare at this gooey, bacon-filled sandwich while I think about where to start. If there's one person I can trust with me and Alex's pseudo-relationship issues, it's my mom. It wasn't that long ago that she was 29 herself. I guess that's probably the reason why I get so carried away with the disrespect sometimes. A lot of the time, I few my mom as my friend instead of my mother because we're only 16 years apart and she understands. When I was 10 and she was 26, I thought she was so stinking old but by the time I was 12 and she was only 28, I realized the age difference really isn't that bad and I started seeking advice from her. She's like my friend at times and that's probably why it's so easy for me to fly off the handle and act like she's my friend. But she never lets me forget that she's my mother. Whether she has to slap me in the mouth, call me by my full name or tell me to watch my mouth, she never lets me forget that she's the adult and she's in charge of me. "He has a baby…"

She nods. "You've told me that. And the baby mama isn't an issue, is she?"

"No, she's dead." I turn my sandwich to the side so I can bite some crust off of it during my next bite. She was just about to take her sandwich out of the frying pan but she paused dead in her tracks just to look at me like I'm being disrespectful, which makes me giggle. "What, ma? She is…get this…" I finish chewing my bite and swallow it. "She died the same day Mark did." Her eyebrows raise. Sometimes it's creepy to look at my mom because it's almost as if I'm looking in a mirror at times. Her expressions are exactly like mine. "Yep…So no, the baby mama isn't an issue…but the baby is."

"I thought you said you had a nice time at um…Disneyland." She turns off my stove and removes the frying pan from the burner. "If the baby was an issue, why'd you go to Disneyland with them?" She cuts her sandwich in half and tosses the knife in the sink. "I told you to be careful dating a man with a baby, didn't I Jo?"

"Well she wasn't an issue then…and I really didn't even realize she was an issue until today." I pluck a piece of her hair off of my bread and show it to her. With her own mouthful of food, she swats my hand away and points at my plate as if she's telling me to eat it anyway. "So at first, I was cautious." I pick up my sandwich and take a bite anyway. I wasn't gonna throw it away just because my mom's hair was on my bread. If it was someone else's hair, it'd be in the garbage but it's my mom's hair and I know she's clean. "You did tell me to be careful and so I was. I was careful, mom. I wanted us to stay friends because…" I sigh and put my sandwich down because I should probably start from the top. "Okay. So I first met Alex when he came to the restaurant. He came and I waited on him…and everybody likes Alex, mom. Have you seen how small this town is?" She nods. "So everybody knows everybody and everybody knows that his wife is dead and he's single. He's literally the most eligible bachelor in this entire town, mom…and I got him. Do you get that? He's the most attractive man in this entire town and he wants…want _ed_ me."

"Why's that so hard to believe, Moe? You're beautiful." You know, I find it hilarious that my mom can say that to me. Really, it's funny. Because my mom is one of the least self-confident people I know and she has the nerve to tell me I'm beautiful? If I'm beautiful, what is she? A goddess? Because she's literally me with a few inches added and a couple wrinkles on my face.

"Anyway…" I sigh. "I met him when he came to the restaurant. I had heard things about him prior to meeting him and really, I wasn't fascinated by him. I was more fascinated by his daughter. His daughter is _beautiful_ , mommy. Long brown hair, gorgeous green eyes….she's so cute. And I was just…you know how I get around children. So I talked to her and I gave her my nametag because she was interested in it. So really, I started bonding with his daughter first. She baked me cookies and ran away here, once. So he eventually asked me if I would babysit for her and I did. I watched her and we just kept bonding, me and the little girl. So it started out as a bond between me and her before it even escalated to me and him. But it did. It escalated to me and him and me and him started to like each other and became friends and then it went further and we kissed and stuff and now I realized that I can't. Mom, I've been here for two months. It's way too much for me. It'll be eight months next week since Mark…I still need a moment. And I realized today that maybe…me and Alex could work if he didn't have a daughter. Because SHE'S too much for me, mom. She's what's too much, not him."

"She reminds you of Gabby, doesn't she?" Hearing her name stings a little bit. I've been able to talk about her an awful lot lately but I've never quite been able to say her name. She did have a name. I let my mom help me name her, actually. The doctors let me hold her before they did all the necessary stuff they had to do. Of course, she didn't survive outside of me. She died almost instantaneously. They tried to keep her in while I was in the operating room for my pelvis but I guess my body had too much trauma and my uterus wasn't suited for it so they had to take her out and they tried to keep her alive outside of me so maybe she'd have a chance if she stayed in the NICU or something but that was just pushing it. She was three, almost four months gestation; there's no possible way she could've survived. But they waited for me to wake up from anesthesia and after they told me about her, they let me hold her. She was wrapped up in a bunch of blankets and she looked more like an alien than a baby but I swear she was beautiful. My mom helped me name her Gabriella, like after the Angel Gabriel in the bible? I had never really heard of that until we had the hospital's priest or whatever come in and bless her before they took her away and stuff but he mentioned something about the Angel Gabriel and I liked the sound of Gabriella so that was her name. "Think you were getting too close too fast?"

"Way too fast, mom." I push the remainder of my sandwich away. I don't have much of an appetite anymore. "And I just wanted something to change. It was way too fast and it was too much for me. And it was like…I taught that little girl a lot of things, mom. She was going through a lot when I first met her, having lost her mother and all. She's four and she's not toilet trained and she still takes a pacifier. I taught her how to use the potty and I started weaning her off the pacifier. It's just…it's a lot that I taught her. And I guess I started feeling like she could've been mine. I know she's not but it started feeling like she could've been. But you know how children are and she didn't want her dad to be dating and then…she caught me and Alex laying together on the couch and she was upset and Alex told me that I'm not her mom and now I just want to take a break. I want to step back. But I like him…I really like him. He's the first boy to ever take the thought of Mark away and that's something. So now I'm just…stuck. Because he's dating now but I don't want him to. I want him to date…me."

"….Oh Jo." She massages her temple like she just got an earful. "Well for starters, did you sleep with him? Because my response is contingent upon that. Did you sleep with him?"

"…It depends. Do you count…like…oral?" I look away from her when I say that. My mom and I have talked about sex before but it's always so awkward. She's my mom…that's weird.

She sighs. "You had no business sleeping with that man. I thought I…Josephine, I raised you so much better than that. I thought I had it drilled into your head that you're not supposed to sleep with someone unless you're 100% sure that it's something you want? What have I always told you about sex? I always told you that sex is sacred and it's precious. You're sharing a very…special, intimate part of yourself with a man when you do that and I told you that you should never lie down and have sex with a man if you think you're going to regret it in the morning. Didn't I tell you that, baby?"

"You did…and I live by that, mommy. I do. I didn't think I was going to regret it. The way things were going when we came back home from Disney World…I really thought that it was going to be okay if I went down on him and I don't regret it. I don't regret doing it. I wouldn't take it back or anything like that, so that's not the case. I just didn't expect for his daughter to catch us in the morning. Everything would've been okay if she didn't catch us. We wouldn't even be having this conversation. But no, mom…I don't regret having oral with him. I know how special and intimate it is and Alex is someone that I could share that with, without a doubt." I put my head down on the counter. "So he went on a date today…and he brought the girl to my job. And I had to wait on them. I mean, I'm not mad that he's dating because I want that for him. I really want him to be happy, mom. But my job? Really?"

"I trust your judgment with the sex thing." She puts her hand on my back. "So what, you're all broken up now?" I nod. "I'm gonna tell you something you probably don't wanna hear, Jo…okay?" I shrug. "You're wrong. He is too, for going on dates so soon and bringing the girl to your job, that's wrong and he's a dickhead for doing that but he's also a man. He's a man and sometimes men lack common sense and good judgment. I can tell you freely that he probably felt like he was doing nothing wrong by bringing her there. He's probably sorry now…after the fact. But while he was doing it? That man had no idea, Jo. At the end of the day, he's a man. So yeah, he's wrong for that. He did you wrong. But you're wrong too. You're wrong for leading that man to believe that you wanted a relationship with him when you know deep down in your heart you're not ready to be dating somebody and especially a somebody with a kid. If you want to start dating, start moving on from Mark then so be it. But you need to make sure you can give your all to a man without having to pull back and the fact that you felt the need to pull back just says in itself that you're not ready. Now I'm gonna tell you what. Alex is his name?" I nod. "When Alex gets into a relationship, he's most likely looking for a woman that can be a potential wife and mother to his child. If he's looking to move on, I can almost guarantee you that's what he's looking for. So you have to be prepared to be that, even if you two end up all broken up like you are now. You still have to be ready for the possibility that you could be his wife and his child's mother. You have to think about that before going into something so blindly, Jo. And the way you're making it sound? You're even more wrong for dogging that baby out the way you did. If you're really stepping back then shame on you for walking away from that little girl. It sounds to me like you're her best friend and if that's true, then why would you let something between you and her father damage that?"

"…God, I hate it when you're right." She was right about a lot of what she just said, mostly about me not wanting to hear that though. I didn't want to hear that. She's my mom and I feel like she should always be on my side. She wasn't on my side a second ago. She was neutral, just hearing the situation out and giving her own third-party opinion but I didn't want to hear that. I wanted to hear her say something like "Oh Jo, fuck Alex for bringing Stacy to your job. You don't need him! But if you really like him, maybe you should try and work it out!" That would've been a better pep talk. "So what do you think I should do? Do you think I should just straight up tell him that I'm not ready to date? Tell him that I thought I was ready but turns out I'm not? Should I tell him that? And tell him that I'm sorry for breaking up with him before we even started dating? Is that what I should say?"

"Well I do think you owe him an apology, yes. I raised you better than that. I raised you better than to go around being a little senseless, selfish heartbreaker. You do owe the man something. But you need to sit down and think." She rubs my back in a circle. "Momo, Mark and Gabby are your past. I know it still hurts like they're your present, but they're not. They're your past. And it's time you start looking for your future. You're 29 years old. Moe, you're young, you're beautiful…you can't stay single forever. You need to get out of this headspace you put yourself in and allow yourself to be happy. You can't punish yourself forever and honestly Jo? I'm not gonna let you punish yourself forever. Start thinking about your future. You're out of that godforsaken town, you're away from those prejudiced, bigoted mother _fuckers_ and you're someplace totally new." If you think I have nothing nice to say about Mark's parents, you should hear my mother talk about them. She could spend hours trashing them, I kid you not. She hates those people with a passion, all because they treated "her baby" wrong. "Let go of your past and start thinking about your future."

To only be 45 years old, my mom's pretty wise, isn't she? It's another one of her traits that I like but won't tell her that I like. I know she has a point and that's why I hate her at the moment. I can't stand when my mom is right. I sigh, roll my eyes and start cleaning up our plates. She's right. I can feel guilty about killing my baby and my husband forever, but I can't punish myself forever. I am only 29 years old and as much as I think I'd be okay with spending the rest of my life alone, I don't _want_ to spend the rest of my life alone. It doesn't necessarily have to be spent with Alex and Lyla, I just want it spent with SOMEBODY. I don't want to die alone. I'll probably blame myself for their deaths until the day I die, honestly. But I have to start thinking about how to make myself happy eventually. Mark would want me to be happy and I guess maybe after spending so much time upset, I kind of deserve to be happy just a little bit. Mommy has a point. "…Why do you call me 'Moe' and 'Momo'? Care to explain that?"

She laughs and helps me clean up. "Because you couldn't say 'Jojo' when you were just learning to talk. I would always point to people and ask you who they were, just so you could learn how to talk and every time I pointed to you, you couldn't say 'Jojo'. You'd say 'Momo'. So it just stuck. You're my Moe now." She puts her hand on top of my head. "You ready to go to bed now?" I nod my head and she strokes my hair. "I'm still gonna kick your ass for cutting your hair off too…"

"Don't start with me, mom."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

Normally, the creaking noise that screeches every time I rock back in forth in the swing on my porch is enough to drive me insane but tonight, I find it eerily comforting. I've been sitting out here since 11:00. It is now 12:00 and clear to me that she's not coming. I texted her at exactly 10:50 and asked her if she'd be willing to walk down the street and meet me on my porch so we could talk about everything that's happened in the last three days. She didn't text back in ten minutes so I already had an inkling that she wasn't going to come but still and yet, I held out a little bit of hope and decided to come outside and wait. I've been sitting out here for an hour and I pretty much know that she's not going to come but I still can't pry my ass off his swing and go in the house even though I know I should. Instead, I wrap my fingers around the bottle of beer on my lap and take another sip. I'm almost all the way through it and I decided that when I finish the beer, I'll go in the house and go to sleep for the night. The beer is my timer. When it's finished, I'm giving up and going in the house. About fifteen minutes ago, when I found that the bottle was more than halfway gone already, I started taking smaller and smaller sips to prolong it. I just don't want to miss her in case she does decide to come.

When I got home from the restaurant with Stacy, I told my dad what happened. I'll never tell anybody this…and I hope my dad won't either…but I may or may not have cried when I got home just a little bit. It was only a little bit, it was barely noticeable and my dad handed me a paper towel. I just felt like the biggest piece of garbage in the world. I haven't felt this bad since I hit my mom back when I was 16. I didn't really hit her…I shoved her. She was slamming Aaron up against the fridge for some reason and she was choking him. I saw the color draining from my baby brother's face and I panicked. So I shoved my mother away from him to help him out and I felt like shit for putting my hands on my mother. I didn't know I could feel this crappy after 14 years. That was _fourteen_ years ago. I didn't know I could feel this shitty again but I do. Anyway, I told my dad what happened and he gave me a hug and for some reason, that helped a little bit. He told me that I should apologize to Jo, but I should give it a day. He told me to give her a day to cool off before I try to apologize and so I went in the living room. I watched TV with Lyla for about an hour before I gave her a bath and put her to bed. Then I sat on the couch for a little bit after she was in bed and I tried to watch some TV but all I could think about was Jo. At first, I thought about the things we did on that couch and that made me happy. But then I just couldn't stop picturing that look on her face from earlier. That look…god, that look is something I never want to see again.

Her eyes were hollow and her pupils were dilated, with tears lining the rims of them. She looked at me like I betrayed her in the worst possible way and I guess I did. I really didn't think she was working. Had I known she was working, I definitely would've asked to NOT be seated in her section. I'd like to think that I wouldn't have taken Stacy there if I knew that Jo was working but that's a load of shit and I know it is. I wanted to hurt Jo so bad for hurting me; that's the way I suppressed it all. Truth be told, I was a little bit miserable after she broke up with me. I wanted to lie in bed and just sleep all day but I had to work and that day of work was awful. I was so angry and so distant. I didn't even want to scrub in on surgeries, I just wanted to chart and think about how she kissed me and then she walked away. I wanted to think about how she gave me a blowjob the night before and then just broke up with me. I was sad at first but the more I thought about it, the angrier I became and that's when I went to ask Stacy out. I wanted to get her back some way and I knew that asking Stacy out would've been the way to do it. That's just what I do. When someone hurts me, I hurt them back. So yeah, I probably would've brought Stacy to The Lobster Hut even if I knew that Jo was working. I would've been asked to be seated elsewhere though, because for some reason, the douchebag in me would go so far as to bring another woman to her job but I think having her wait on me is just low. Sick, isn't it? I'm not above bringing another woman to her job but I AM above making my ex wait on us? Crazy how my mind works.

I just wanted to hurt Jo the way she hurt me and now that I've succeeded in actually doing it, I would give anything in this world to take it back. I should've listened to my dad and given her a day to cool off because now, she's ignoring me even more. I'd ignore me too though, let's be honest. If she did what I did to me, I would ignore her too. Hell, I would never talk to her ever again if she did that to me. I think the thing that makes me feel the worst is the fact that I know she wasn't trying to hurt me by breaking up with me. It wasn't her intention to hurt me and I know that. She was just trying to protect herself and slow things down so neither one of us get hurt in the process. I said earlier that I didn't really know what kind of internal struggle she has going on, but I lied. I know what's happening with her and I understand it completely. She was feeling like she was something to Lyla. She taught her how to do a lot of things and she got really close to her and she started feeling like she was a little something more than just Lyla's friend. I yelled at her and told her that she was nothing to Lyla and that sent her into shock, reality even. And she realized that I was right and she thought she was moving too fast and she needed a step back. And I know that the fact that she lost her own baby girl has something to do with it. She's clearly still very unstable about having lost her own child and I was insensitive to that. I understand Jo perfectly…which is why I'm sick with myself. I understand her, I know how her mind works. So why would I feel the need to hurt her when she wasn't trying to hurt me? I don't know.

I don't plan on asking for her to take me back or whatever. I don't plan to say "hey Jo, I'm sorry can we just go back to kissing, touching, cuddling and having oral sex?" I just want to let her know that I'm sorry for everything I did, including addressing the Lyla situation in such an ugly manner and I want her to know that I'd still very much like to be her friend. The kind of friends we were before Disney. The kind of friends where I could sit on her kitchen floor and talk to her for hours while Lyla fell asleep in her bed. The kind of friend that could talk to her for hours while sitting on the boardwalk and the kind of friend that just wanted to ride rollercoasters with her. I'd very much like it if we could erase everything that happened in the last few days. She could go back to watching Lyla for me and I could go back to helping her do things, like drag paint in her house. If she accepts that, she can watch Lyla for me this Saturday coming up. You see, I really like Stacy. And since it's pretty much a done deal between me and Jo after today, I can try and pursue things with Stacy. Honestly, I think I need to stop dating. I think I need to lay low and remain single for a while, but Stacy had a really nice time with me on our first date and I don't want to hurt her feelings by not asking her back out. I do like Stacy and I had a good time too. So even though I don't think I should, I'm going to ask her on date number two. I've just had enough of hurting girls for month. I hurt Lyla by sleeping on the couch with Jo, I hurt Jo by telling her that she's not Lyla's mother and by bringing Stacy to her job. I don't need to add Stacy to the list by not asking her out on another date. I'd feel even lower than I already do.

I take the last and final swig of my beer and put the empty bottle down. I glance up at the moon and sigh. I'll talk to Jo eventually. It obviously won't be tonight, but I'll talk to her eventually. Maybe tomorrow. I'll walk down her house bright and early, before she gets the chance to go to work or go anywhere. We can talk then. I stand up from the swing, grab the beer bottle and drag my feet across the porch so I can go to sleep for the night. "…Am I too late?" I turn around. She's standing in front of my gate donning a pair of yellow shorts and an oversized grey jacket. She came. She actually came. I purse my lips and internally will myself to keep all tears in my eyes. I've already spent enough time crying today. I just stand next to my front door and look at her. I can't believe she came. I really thought I was shit out of luck. She opens up the gate and comes through it. She must've had to think about whether or not she wanted to come or not. She's a whole hour and fifteen minutes late so it's not like she sprung out of bed immediately to come see me. She sat there for a minute and thought about coming. I'm so glad she decided it was okay to. She slowly walks up the steps and sits down on the top one with her back facing me like she did the day she broke up with me. "Sorry I'm late. My…mom. She came into town a little earlier than expected and I wanted to wait for her to go to sleep." …So she didn't have to think about it. She just waited for her mother to fall asleep. I don't know if I'm happy or sad about that. "Thanks for waiting." She whispers. I'm currently resisting the urge to just pick her up and hug her. Instead, I walk to the step she's sitting on and sit down too.

"We need to talk." I put the empty beer bottle down on the porch next to me and stare straight ahead like she's doing.

"I know." She pulls up the sleeves on her jacket and rests her elbows on her knees and her chin in the palms of her hands. "That's why I came."

"Well…" I try to pick a place to start. I guess I'll start with today. "I'm sorry for today. Really, I am. From the bottom of my heart, truly, sincerely, deeply. I'm sorry." She rolls her eyes and her body language speaks the words that she doesn't. She's very angry with me for that. "I didn't know you were working. I-I rode past your house and your light was on. So I thought you were home. I didn't know you were at work. If I knew…I wouldn't have…" I stop myself from telling a lie. "Anyway… I'm sorry. And if you're mad at me for that…I understand. And if you're still mad at me for kicking you out then I'm sorry for that too. You know I didn't want to—"

"How many times do I have to tell you that I'm NOT mad at you for kicking me out? God, Alex. Stop apologizing for that. I'm not pissed at you for that." She scoots away from me and sighs hard.

"Well then why did you ignore my text earlier?" I throw my hands up. I didn't call her down here to argue. I called her down here to reconcile.

"Because I was at WORK?!" She finally looks at me but it's not in a good way. She's looking at me like I'm as dumb as they come. Okay, I deserve that. That was dumb. So it was a misunderstanding. She was at work. I didn't think she was at work but she was and that's why she didn't text back. She wasn't blatantly ignoring me like I thought she was. That's my fault. "What were you texting me for anyway?"

"I wanted to know if you wanted to watch Lyla for me." I run my hands through my hair.

"…Oh sure. You wanted me to watch your daughter while you go paint the town with your new flame, right?" I can't tell if she's being sarcastic or serious. I mean obviously she's being sarcastic but her voice is so calm and stable that it's easy to confuse.

"…Are you mad at me for going on a date?" I raise my brow.

"Huh? No." She shakes her head. She's still being sarcastic. "Totally not mad at you for going on a date. Totally not mad that I suck you off for half an hour and you repay me by hooking up with another girl a day later. Nope, not mad. It was just a blowjob, right? Like a handshake…"

"Wait, you can't get mad at me for that. You can't do that, that's not fair, Jo." I put my hand up to stop her from saying anything to interrupt me. "YOU told me that you wanted me to date. YOU told me that I needed to go on dates. YOU'RE the one that told me that you thought it was time I start dating, Jo. It was all your idea." With a menacing grin on her face, she looks up at the sky and shakes her head. "What?! YOU told me that I should date! YOU told me to go ahead and do it! You can't get mad at me for asking out Stacy when YOU'RE the one that said to do it. YOU told me you thought I should date. YOU told me to go ahead and—"

"ME, ALEX!" She throws her hands up and turns towards me. "ME! I MEANT ME!" She sighs again, puts her head in her hands and shakes it. "….Since I have to spell every freaking thing out for you…" She's calmer now. "I meant you should date me. Not Stacy. Me. I wanted you to date me. You're so freaking blind…but I meant me."

She meant her? WHY DIDN'T SHE SAY SO!? I totally would've dated Jo! I would love nothing more than to have her get dolled up so I can take her to a fancy restaurant! She didn't say anything! She just let me believe that she would be okay if I went after Stacy and here the whole time, she meant her. "…Jo…" I grab her arm and pull her closer to me but she snatches away. "Jo, I didn't….I didn't know. I'm sorry…" I keep trying to pull her closer to me but she won't let me. "I didn't know, alright? When you said step back…I thought you meant that was it for us. And when you said date, I thought you meant…other people."

"I did." She's looking away from me again. "I don't know." She shrugs her shoulders. "I thought I did. I thought I meant you could date other people but I didn't. I meant me. I don't want you to date Stacy. I want you to date me." When she finally turns her head back to look my way, I can see tears lining her eyes again but she looks like she's more frustrated than hurt this time around. "Alex, I'm right here. What's wrong with me? Why would you even think…Why'd you take her there?! Of all places for you to take her, you take her to my JOB?! And even if I wasn't working, they were gonna tell me! My friends were gonna tell me that they saw you with her…did you want me to hurt? Did you want to see me break down? Because it kind of seems like you like seeing me crumble." Her tears spill over while she rants. "I felt like you took a freaking football and beamed me in the face. What is WRONG with you?! Why would you do that to me?! What did I do to you? I mean seriously…because I couldn't even function after that. What did I do to piss you off so bad?"

"You broke up with me." I sigh and look down at the ground. I have to be honest with her. I can't look Jo in the eye and lie to her. "It's just what I do, Jo. I-I hurt back. When someone hurts me, I hurt them back. I hurt them back, before they get the chance to hurt me again. It's just what I do and I am so sorry. You broke up with me and Jo…" I pinch the bridge of my nose. "You broke me for a minute there. When you told me you'd see me around? You broke me. There's something there for you, girl. I don't know what it is, but it's something and it's driving me nuts. And when you broke it off…I wasn't okay. I know you're right there. I know you are, I see you. You're right there and I see you. And it is you. It's always been you. From the moment you held my daughter to watch the fireworks and I wanted to hold your hand Jo, I knew. It's always been you. It was Stacy today, but it was still you. I was with her, but I just kept thinking about you. It's ALWAYS you. There's something there for you. No matter how hard I fight it or deny it, it's there. And when I thought about the possibility…when you broke up with me and I thought about the possibility of never getting the chance to explore that, whatever it is...something snapped. You hurt me and I wanted to hurt you. And now that I did it? Jo I am SO sorry."

"I wasn't trying to hurt you. Alex, I just…" She runs her hands through her hair and pulls on it like she's overcome with frustration. "You have to understand me and I don't think you do. You have to understand that I'm NOT used to having anything to lose. I was raised by a teenage mother, we were homeless, in and out of shelters for two years…I'm NOT used to this. I'm not used to having something to lose and now that I do…Alex, I'm scared." She bites her lip and looks at me with honesty all over her face. "Last time I had something to lose…I lost it all. I got comfortable, I let my guard down and I lost my husband and I lost my baby. And now with you? I'm falling way too fast here. I'm finally feeling like I have something to lose again and I hate it. I can't STAND it. I'm not ready for that. I'm ready to…to be with you, to date you…whatever. I'm ready to move on from my life back in Massachusetts. I'm ready to find someone to be happy with but what I'm not ready for is to lose something because I'm moving way too fast. I felt myself slipping. I felt it but I ignored it and when you said that to me…you stopped me. I grabbed ahold of myself, I stopped slipping and I realize that I need to pause. I don't need to go any faster than this right now because if I do…I'm gonna lose you and I don't think I can handle that. So I want to step back from you and from Lyla too…especially from Lyla. She's too much for me. I-I love her Alex. And that scares the SHIT out of me."

"Weird…" I sigh. "Because the fact that you love her…makes me like you." She wrinkles her brow at me. "It does. That's important to me. I'm ready to move on from Jenna too… I have a bunch of things on my checklist and that's first. The woman I move on to? She HAS to love Lyla first and foremost. She has to love Lyla more than she loves me, that's a must. I need someone that's gonna be all in for her. I need someone that's ready to be a mother figure in her life. And the fact that loving her scares you? Well that sucks. Because the fact that you love her just makes me even more certain that you're _probably_ the only woman I'm ever going to be ready to even try committing to." I purse my lips. "Add that to the fact that she adores you…it's a recipe for disaster, I guess." When I add that Lyla adores her, her eyes close. "She does, Jo. You're all she's been talking about. Which brings me to my next point. I really hope you reconsider this because you're walking away from her right now and I don't think you realize what you're doing."

"I realize perfectly…and I hate myself for that." She wipes her eyes with her jacket sleeves. "I know she probably thinks I'm walking away from her but I'm not. I'm not walking out on her and I'll never turn my back on her. I'll always be there for her. But I can't keep…overstepping this boundary. There has to be a line somewhere Alex. There has to be a line set by you so that I know how far I can go before I cross that line. Because if you allow me to set forth my own line…" She closes her eyes. "I love children, Alex. And if I wasn't so stupid eight months ago, I would have my own right now. She would be in my arms, taking all my kisses and cuddles and I wouldn't have to feel like I'm…like I'm patching this hole in my heart with Lyla. I wouldn't have to feel that way if I wasn't so stupid. But I was. I was stupid and I don't have my own and that void in my heart is still there. So if you allow me to set forth my own line, that wouldn't be good. I know I'll go way too far. Losing my own baby still hurts way too bad and I'll go way too far. It's a mental thing, a coping thing…so please set a boundary here."

I bite my bottom lip. I know what she's asking me to do but in truth, I don't think I can do it. "I can't." I shrug. "I can't set a boundary when I have none. Jo, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing. You lost a child and she lost a mother. You might not see it, but there's a void in her heart too. There's a void in her heart that you're filling by being there. How could I set a limit on that? If you want to kiss and cuddle her, go on ahead. She needs a mother to kiss and cuddle her. If you want to help me toilet train her, so be it. If you think it's ridiculous that she has a pacifier in her mouth, chances are I'm on the same page and you can go ahead and take it out. I'm not going to put a limit on how much you can love my daughter and how much my daughter can love you. I'm not gonna do that." I shake my head. "But if it'll make you feel better….maybe you can start talking to me about things before you do it. I mean…I'll most likely agree with you 99% of the time, but if it'll make you feel better, come to me first. If you're thinking about…I don't know…sticking underwear on her instead of a pull-up? Ask me first. I'll say yes or no and that's how it'll go. Does that work for you?"

"That could work." She nods and takes a deep breath out of relief. "…I still need to talk to her and tell her that I'm sorry for what she saw."

"Don't worry about that. I took care of it. She was just confused." I shrug it off.

"Confused? About what?"

"Relationships, mostly. You know how four year olds are." I scoot a little closer to her. "She has all these people around her and she doesn't know anything about these people. Like grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. She just needed to be told that grandparents are my parents, cousins will be my siblings' kids, aunts are my siblings and mothers aren't just something that everyone gets. She needed an explanation. She was just upset because she thought that me dating you meant she wasn't gonna get a mommy. It was kid stuff."

"Well I'm glad it was something simple." She scoots back on the porch and pulls her knees into her chest. "I wish ours was that simple of a fix."

"Yeah, me too." I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees.

"So what about the other night?" She mumbles so low that it's barely audible.

I smirk. "What about the other night?"

"We didn't really get the chance to talk about it." She drums her fingers along her kneecaps. "What'd you…think?"

"I thought it was awesome." I look back at her. She's tapping her feet up and down on the porch and staring at the swing off in the corner. "Why? Did you not like it? Because I could've returned the favor."

"No." She shakes her head. "I mean no, I didn't dislike it. I liked it. I'd do it again." She shrugs. "But you don't need to return the favor just because I did it. I'm not that kind of girl. I'm all about…pleasing my man." She sighs.

"Oh, so now I'm your man?" She glares at me and I laugh. "Don't worry Jo. When I return the favor…it's because I want to do it and not because you did it." I hope she's not insecure about her blowjob skills because she seriously does NOT need to be. Her blowjob skills are WELL up to par, if I do say so myself. She pays attention to EVERYTHING and that's skill points in my book. "You hear me?"

"I hear you." She puts her legs back down and stands up. "I should go home. I don't want my mom waking up to an empty house and she's not a sound sleeper anyway, so…" She dusts her butt off and stretches out. "I'll see you tomorrow. She was talking about you…I think she wants to meet you, so maybe we can go do something tomorrow. She brought her bathing suit…maybe we can go to the beach if you're not busy."

"I'm actually off tomorrow…sounds like a plan." I don't bother getting up, I just tilt my head upward and look at her. I'm so glad we fixed things. "What should I expect from her?"

"Expect…" She folds her arms around her chest and looks down at me too. "Expect me…alright?" I nod once. "I'll see you tomorrow, Alex." She unfolds her arms and starts walking down my steps, swinging her arms in the process. I grab one of her hands so she can't go any further. "What?" She tilts her head. I stand up from the step I'm sitting on. "What, Alex?"

"You never answered me when I asked you if I was your man." I hold onto her hand and she lets me.

She smiles at the ground. "…Well you never officially asked, so…"

"Will you go steady with me, Jo?" I can't believe she's making me ask. I feel like a stupid teenager again. I crack a smile. "Please?"

"…Yeah." She smiles back. "I'll go steady with you, Alex." She raises up on her tiptoes, wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me very softly on my lips. I don't try to force my tongue in her mouth or anything. I just kiss her softly without tongue and enjoy having her in my arms again. I missed hugging her. She pulls back first. "…I have to go home. I'll see you tomorrow."

"I'll see you tomorrow." I kiss her cheek one last time and let her go.


	33. An Open Mind

"That right there is the post office…" I point to the white and navy blue building as we stroll along past it. I have to go pick up my paycheck from my job so I just thought that maybe I should take the opportunity to show her the place that I've been living for the past two months. So far, she's been impressed by the fact that literally everything is within walking distance and the things that aren't are on the bus line. I think she likes Millerton but I'm secretly hoping she doesn't like it too much. I don't want her to get any ideas about this place. The last thing I need is for her to like it so much that she decides she wants to move here. I'll kill myself. And I'm not being melodramatic, I mean that. If my mom ever decided to move to Millerton, I would gladly jump off the Pensacola Bridge and take my chances plummeting into the Atlantic Ocean below. At this rate, I can tell that I'm going to be late meeting Alex. We made plans to meet each other at the Tiki Bar on the beach at 1:00 and being that my mother took forever in the shower this morning, she's going to be the reason that we're late. "And that's the bar. I hear it doesn't get much business, but it's there anyway." I point to the tiny brown building we walk past. "And this is my job." I point to the building directly ahead of us that we're walking towards.

"Nice town." She nods her head and looks around at every building I introduce her to. "'Do you have any friends I could meet?" I put my head down and sigh. "Jo, why do you at like I'm pulling your teeth? Do I annoy you that badly?" She puts her hand on my back and I shrug her off. I don't know why she constantly feels the need to TOUCH me. Everything would be okay if she didn't feel the need to rub my hair, hold me, hug me, kiss me…I just don't like it when she freaking touches me. She lifts her hand and pushes some of my hair back and I dodge her. She sucks her teeth. " _Enough_ , Jo!"

"I don't want you touching me! Stop touching me and I won't do that to you. I don't mind talking to you and I don't even mind walking with you but you constantly feel the need to touch me and I hate that. Don't touch me!" I feel bad for blowing up at her like that but I really don't want her to touch me. She's always touching me. I don't know what it is about her and feeling like she has to touch me but I really wish she wouldn't. "Just don't frickin' touch me and we wouldn't have an iss—" She shuts me up by slapping me on my shoulder. She was aiming for my cheek/mouth but I flinched and hunched my shoulder up and she caught me in my shoulder. I contemplate raising my hand and just swatting back at her but I do think that it would be a fatal error if I were to do that. I may talk reckless to her, disrespect her and treat her bad at times but I will admit that I'm afraid of my mom. She hits very hard and I've witnessed her when she's extremely pissed off before and it's not pretty.

I've pissed her off to the point where she's choked me before. I was 15 and I snuck out of the house while she was sleeping. I went to the park downtown with a couple of my friends and we were smoking weed. When I decided to come back home, she was sitting on the couch waiting for me and she was convinced that I was having sex. I was hanging out with a group of boys because I've always gotten along better with males than females and she thought that I was out there just being a big slut. One of my mom's biggest worries is that I was going to end up like her. Despite the fact that I didn't start having actual sexual intercourse until I was 18 and in college, she was just always so worried about me getting pregnant at 15 like she did. So when she woke up that night and found that I wasn't in the bed where I should've been, she went ballistic. She was looking out the window and she saw me walking back towards my house with those boys and when I got in the house, she was sitting on the couch with the scariest look on her face. I tried to explain before she could whoop me but she got off that couch and kicked my ASS. And she started accusing me of having sex and when I swore up and down that I didn't, she didn't believe me because she knows how big of a liar I can be at times so she literally made me pull down my pants so she could check me. I was still high off my ass from smoking weed clearly, because when she was done checking me, she hugged me and told me she was sorry for degrading my privacy like that and I told her to "get the fuck away from me" and she started choking me. My mom's always been a big fan of spanking as discipline, ever since I was about three and old enough to truly understand the meaning of "NO". I've gotten tons of spankings in my day, mostly for lying. But she's never gone to the extreme of choking me the way she did that night and even though I thought she was a monster for days after that, I always knew that I deserved that. She could smell the weed on me and I literally swore at her. I deserved every bit of that. And when she finally let me go that night? When she stopped choking me? She cried herself to sleep that night.

I think she swatted me for saying "frickin". Obviously she doesn't care if I cuss around her because I'm grown, I'm allowed. But I'm NOT allowed to cuss at her. "You want to reevaluate your choice of words with me, Josephine?" Her voice is so calm and honestly, that's one of the things that's always scared me the most about my mom. She can be seething with anger and so calm at the same time. When she's calm, that's how I know I'm in deep shit. Her looks are so deceiving and that's scary because I never know what to expect. I could think that she's calm when in reality, she's plotting to smack me in the mouth or something. I bite my lip and try to keep the anger bubbling in the pit of my stomach at bay. My mom knows how bad my temper can be at times and she just doesn't care. She doesn't put up with my shit. So I learned at a young age that showing my mom how angry I am with her when she hits me and when she yells at me doesn't do me any good because she could literally care less that I'm mad. "If you don't want me to touch you, that's fine. But I'm getting REAL sick of your attitude, Jo. You think _I'm_ pissing _you_ off? You haven't seen pissed off yet. You're really starting to piss ME off, Jo." Just like I knew it would, my bubbling anger is getting the best of me and it's starting to turn to sadness. If I get mad and stay mad for an extended period of time, eventually the anger goes away and I'll start to cry. My tears start welling up in my eyes. I bite my bottom lip and whisper, "sorry" to her. "Excuse me?"

"Sorry." I blink back the tears and pick my head up.

"Much better." She wraps her arm around my shoulder and pulls me close to her. She presses her lips to my temple and rubs my shoulder. This is a routine that's been drilled in my head after having being raised by this woman. She rules with an iron fist, she's a tough disciplinarian but she never wants me to ever feel like she doesn't love me. So after she gets an apology out of me, she always hugs me, kisses me and forgets that whatever I did even happened. It's been drilled into my head because when I was a toddler, she'd swat me on the butt and make me sit in timeout. When it was time for me to get out of timeout, she would stand in front of me, make me say sorry and give me a kiss and a hug when I did. "You want me to come in with you or stay out here?" And just like that, our little squabble is done and over. My mom doesn't harp and dwell on much. She's a big fan of moving past things. I rub my eyes just to make sure that no tears actually did fall and sniff. I wave her along and walk up the steps. I'm not sure who's working at this moment but on the slight chance that any of my friends are working, I'll introduce them to my mom.

"Just follow me." I open the door to the restaurant and find that it's not at all busy, which is a good thing. I love it when it's not busy on payday because that means I won't have to wait for someone to become available to cash my check. When it's busy, I have to sit at the bar and wait for someone to have a spare moment and that's super annoying. It's especially good that I don't have to wait today considering the fact that I'm already running late as it is. "Hi Lacey." I greet the dirty blonde hostess with a half-smile and a wave. "I'm just here to pick up my pay…and she's with me." Lacey nods and motions for me to go on back. I look to make sure my mom is still following me and walk towards the bar. "Just sit here, I'll be right back." Lucille is working today but she's the only one out of all my friends that's working and she's behind the bar. I walk over to the soda machine where she's standing so I can tell her hi. "Hey Luce." I lean against the soda machine and sigh. "Slow?"

"Extremely." She's refilling the coffee pot. "You here to pick up your check?" I nod my head. "I'll run back and get it for you." She closes the coffee pot and tousles my hair, which makes me wrinkle my nose. I don't know why I'm bothered less by other people touching my hair than I am by my mom touching it but I am. It's probably because my mom does it ALL the time. She's always touching me whereas Lucille only does it sometimes. "What time's your mother coming into town? You still got a few hours of preparation?" She heads towards the safe, where Tony keeps the checks until they're ready to be cashed.

"Yeah, I wish. She's sitting at the bar right now." I stick around by the register while I wait for her to find my check, scan it in and cash it. She pauses looking for my check and glances down the bar. I don't think she can see her because she's been looking for an awful long time. "…The brunette wearing the blue tank top." I point her out.

"Wow! She looks just like you…holy crow."

"Yeah, I guess." I shrug.

 **X X X**

"We gotta see about getting you a car while I'm here, Joey." We're almost to the beach by now and she hasn't said anything since we left the restaurant until now. I must say, I prefer silence. "Sure everything is within walking distance, but I don't want you to keep having to walk places. You need a little something to get you from point A to point B. Especially with your legs and all." She's been sipping on that same strawberry lemonade since we left the restaurant and I'm trying to figure out how it's not gone already. She was thirsty so I bought her something to drink with my employee discount. I figured that was the least I can do after I made her smack me earlier. My mom doesn't hold grudges and she lets things go fairly quickly, but I do not. I'll dwell on something for hours and I'm still dwelling on the fact that she smacked me. "Not something expensive, either. Just something cheap, that'll get you where you need to be."

"I don't need a car. I'm fine with walking…my legs don't even hurt me." I tell a little while lie about my legs but I lie just to protect myself. If she knows that my hips are bothering me, she'll force me to sit in bed for the remainder of her visit while she waits on me hand and foot the way she did when I was in the hospital. I was in the hospital for about a month and a half after the accident and during that time, I was rehabbing my injuries. She stayed with me for the entire time and she waited on me hand and foot, even when I didn't want her to. When my mom learned the reason behind the accident, she was upset for sure, but she was one of those people that didn't judge me. She's my mom so of course she was on my side, but she never once rubbed it in my face. She was just super supportive and she was the one that suggested I get a therapist to talk to about my problems. She annoyed the hell out of me with the way she was there every single day but as much as I hate to admit it, I needed her and I'm eternally grateful that she was there. "Mommy, you came here to visit me. You didn't come here to spend your money on me and stuff. I can make my own way."

"I know you can, Jo. I know that." She offers me some of her lemonade and I take it. "I raised you like that. You're independent, you don't need anybody and you always make your own way. That's the way I raised you…which is why I never quite understood why you felt like you needed Mark's money…but anyway, I know all of this. I know you don't need me to help you and I'm proud of you for that, Momo. But I want to help you. I want to do these things for you." I just hand her the lemonade back and say nothing. Fighting with her about spending money on me is pointless because she's just going to do what she wants anyway. Fighting with my mom about anything is pointless. "So I'm gonna meet this Alex, right?" I fight off a smile. Finally…Alex. Now there's a topic I could get lost in a conversation with. "Fill me in. What's he like? What should I talk to him about?" I didn't realize how excited I am to see him until I heard his name and now I can't stop smiling like an idiot. "…Look at that smile. You're crazy about that man…there's something you aren't telling me."

I didn't tell her that he's officially my boyfriend. We've only been dating for not even 24 hours yet and I don't think we've told anybody. Well first of all, I don't know who I would tell besides my mom. I haven't seen Luke, Kaylee or Macy today because I don't work. I didn't tell Lucille about it. Who else is left for me to tell besides my mom? I really can't say why I haven't told my mom. It's not like I don't want to, because I do. Hell, I want to stand on top of Mount Everest and shout it from the peak. But there's something about this entire thing that doesn't seem like it needs to be bragged about. I'm not trying to keep it a secret, I just don't quite see the point in telling about it. I'm happy about it…I just don't want to jinx that. Because anything can happen. We can decide tomorrow that we work better as friends and this entire thing can be over and I can end up back at square one. I don't want to jinx it. He's my boyfriend…my BOYFRIEND. Who wouldn't smile about that? I don't think he's told anyone either. The one thing that Alex and I both agree on is that we're NOT telling Lyla right away. We're going to tell her eventually, but not yet. I can't wait to spend time with him. I wish I didn't have to spend time with him, Lyla AND my mom though. I wish I had a couple hours to myself with him but I'll take anything I can get.

"Jo?" My mom snaps me out of my Alex-filled thoughts. With a smile still on my face, I look up and turn my head to look at her as we keep walking towards the beach. "I know you entirely too well. I know you better than you know yourself. And there's something you're not telling me. What are you not telling me?"

"Nothing, mom. It's nothing…really." I force my smile away and clear my throat. "Okay, so…his daughter's gonna be there too. She's really shy so don't take it personal if she doesn't talk to you. She'll probably just look at you for a little bit but it's just her shyness so don't think she's bratty. She's not, she just has to warm up to you. Talk to her about animals or princesses and she'll love you." I brief her on Lyla first. "…And Alex? …Be open-minded. You might not think he's good looking and you might think he's kind of ugly but remember, it's the personality that counts and I think he's sexy…and that's all that counts, okay?" She snickers. "Just remember that his wife died too, okay? So he might not seem as…like…into me as he could be but just remember that he's going through the same thing I'm going through. And he's a single dad so he might seem a little tired or like…overly involved with his daughter. And he's not really a man of many words. He doesn't say much…Just don't embarrass me, mom. Okay? Keep an open mind about him."

"You know I'm going to size him up though, don't you? You're my baby, Jo. You can't tell me that you like him, you went on vacation with him and had oral sex with him and not expect me to size him up. I won't embarrass you but I want to know exactly who you're dealing with here. I promise I'll keep an open mind, baby." She ruffles my hair and this time, I let her. "And you know I don't care about looks. I thought Mark was the ugliest thing you've ever dated but I was nice about it. He's not for me to find attractive. As long as you find him attractive, what do I matter?"

"Just keep an open mind."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I don't want to jinx anything, but we've been having amazing weather so far this summer. It's been hot but not too humid, sunny with a few clouds to shade here and there and breezy. Today is no exception to that. Today, the sky is scarce with clouds and the sun is beating down hot and sunny. The last time I checked the weather, it said that today is a whopping 96 degrees and the tide is high; ideal for a leisure day spent at the beach. In all seriousness, I wish I had a sitter for Lyla and I wish Jo had a sitter for her mother. I would kill to have a few uninterrupted hours of alone time with her again. I walk around to the back of the truck and open the door so I can get Lyla out of her car seat. It might be a little bit too hot out here for her today so I took proper precautions. I lotioned her up with sunscreen before we left the house and her hair is up in a bun so it's not resting on her neck and making her any hotter than she needs to be. "Lift your arms up, Ly." She takes the blue lollipop she was sucking on out of her mouth and lifts her arms up so I can unbuckle her seatbelt. Her lips are all blue despite the fact that I brushed her teeth this morning and everything. I tried so hard to keep her from even getting a lollipop when I took her into the bank with me, but the bank teller thought she was "the cutest thing she's ever seen" and she just HAD to offer Lyla a lollipop. And of course, once she saw the cup of lollipops, I couldn't tell her no. I really hate when she walks around with discolored lips from eating candy. It makes her look dirty.

I unbuckle her and look her arms out of the holes to get her out of the seat and grab the drawstring bag I packed for us. I usually pack a great big beach bag full of all her toys and whatnot but today, all I packed are her floaties and a few towels. We're not staying here all day so I didn't see the point in packing all her beach toys. I pick her up and lock the car doors behind us. "Wan some?" She slobbers all over me due to the fact that she talks with a slight lisp and offers me some of the slobbery, goopy lollipop. I stick my tongue out and she lays the lollipop on it. It's not often that I eat off of Lyla anymore. I used to eat off of her all the time back when she was littler. She went through a "my toys" and "my food" stage and Jenna was desperate to teach her how to share, so that's how I started eating off of her when she was smaller. In order to teach her how to share, every time she had something to eat, I would ask her for a bite and I would actually take it. I can't tell you how many slobbery cookies, french fries, chicken wings and popsicles I've had in my mouth. This is the first time I've eaten off of her in a while. "Dada…We goin' to see JoeDoe?" She drools on me again and now my shoulder is sticky. She can't get the double J sound down to save her life. My dad and I have been working with her, trying to get her to say "Jojo" right and so far, all we've been able to get out of her is "JoeDoe". She's trying.

"Yeah, we're going to see Jojo." I secure my arm around her body so I don't drop her and walk down the flight of steps that lead down to the beach. I don't know why, but as I'm walking onto this beach, I'm halfway expecting to see rollercoasters, a ferris wheel and game booths. The last time we came to the beach, that's what was all over the boardwalk and there's a small piece of me that's disappointed when all the red, white and blue balloons, streamers and decorations are gone. I told Jo that we'd meet her at the Tiki Bar at 1:00. When we got out of the car, it was exactly 12:52 so I'm probably a little bit early but better early than late, I guess. After we made it official that we're boyfriend and girlfriend last night, I was kind of expecting something to change. I was expecting to feel differently, like Jo is something completely different and like I'm a changed man. But in reality, I don't. I don't feel any differently today than I did yesterday. It's a bit surreal to think that I actually have a girlfriend now and I'm not single, but I don't feel differently about that. I still feel like a regular kind of guy. As usual, while me and Lyla are walking on the pathway to get to the Tiki Bar, women are staring me down. I know that Lyla notices that women are staring but I just ignore them and keep my hand on her back. I find a spot to sit down at on the patio outside the building so we can wait for Jo and her mom. I put Lyla down in a chair and sit across from her. The women are still staring but I still just ignore them and focus on Ly. "Are you excited to see Jojo?"

"Yeah daddy 'acause I miss her." She puts her lollipop down on the wooden table and kicks her foot up so she can mess with the strap on her sandal. When she puts her leg up, she's just letting all her business between her legs hang out since she's wearing nothing but her bathing suit. I reach across and make her put her foot down. I don't need to tell her why she has to put her foot down because Lyla is a good girl and she'll do whatever I tell her to do. "You miss JoeDoe too dada?" She keeps her foot down and reaches for her lollipop but I grab it before she can. I already know that if I throw this lollipop away, I'm going to have to either sedate her or strangle her because she's GOING to freak out so instead of tossing it away, I stick it in my mouth to clean off the germs from the table first. When I'm sure it's free of woodchips and such, I hand it back to her and let her continue to suck on it. Needless to say, she doesn't know that Jo's officially my girlfriend now. I haven't told her and in all honesty, I don't think I will. I wanna talk to Jo about it before I actually tell her. I haven't even told my dad either. Granted, we've only been official for less than 24 hours but I'm still not sure if we should tell anybody anything just yet. I will say one thing though…Jo's my girl now…and I really hope all these women stop staring at me when my girl gets here.

"Yeah, I miss Jojo too." I didn't lie to Lyla just then. I do miss Jo. I always miss her though, it's nothing new. I always, always, always miss Jo. I just saw her last night and I already miss her. I haven't decided if I'm nervous to meet her mom or not yet. We just became boyfriend and girlfriend last night and I'm already meeting her mother. If this was a less complicated relationship, I have no doubt in my mind that we would've waited to do the "meet the parents" thing. But me and Jo's relationship is extremely complicated and slightly confusing so being that her mother lives all the way in New Jersey, I might as well take this opportunity to meet the woman. I asked Jo last night what I should expect and she didn't give me much of anything, the only thing she told me was to expect her. I'm not sure what she meant by that but as of right now, I'm expecting two Jo's to walk up. I took her literally when she said expect her. "You want something to eat, Ly?" I already know her answer is going to be "no" because I already fed her. I woke up unusually early this morning so I made her some bacon, some eggs and microwaveable pancakes. She had a real big breakfast so I'm not surprised when she shakes her head "no" at me. I slide my phone out of my back pocket so I can see what time it is. It's 1:05. I shove my phone back in my pocket and look across the table to make sure Lyla is still okay. She's sucking on her lollipop and staring at this woman that's been staring at us ever since we sat down. I would tell her to stop staring but why should I make sure my daughter is being polite and respectful when this woman won't even give us the decency and respect to stop staring at us? "Ly…come over here." I hold my arms out. "Come here, baby girl."

She slides down off chair and teeters over to the other side of the table where I'm sitting. I pick her up and sit her on my lap. Although I'm somewhat against making her stop staring when the woman won't stop staring, I'm still trying to raise a little girl to be polite, well-mannered and respectful. So I'll make her stop staring anyway. "Daddy?" She turns her head to look at me. "…Who are all these people?" She whispers to me, referring to all the women drooling over me. I feel kind of bad that she has to witness all these disrespectful women gawking at her father like he's a piece of meat. Eventually, I hope that me and Jo become public enough so that we can hold hands around people and whatnot. I just hope that the staring and gawking will stop once these women see that I'm not single anymore. "They look 'acause you handsome?"

I chuckle. "Yeah. They look because daddy's handsome." I press my lips to her cheek and catch a glimpse of a woman nudge her girlfriend and mouth the word "aww" when they see me kiss my Lyla. Lyla saw it too, so she turns around to face me and wraps her arms around my neck. Seeing the way she's acting around all these women gawking at us just makes me realize that I shouldn't tell her that Jo's my girlfriend just yet. I'm going to tell her eventually, just not right now. I have to ease her into it. Like first, I'll introduce the idea to her. I'll explain to her about girlfriends first. Then I'll up it to explaining that girlfriends and boyfriends sometimes hold hands and kiss and stuff. And then I'll break it to her that Jo's my girlfriend. I've thought this through already, as you can see. Just last night when I was laying in bed, I thought it through. "But they also stare because you're so beautiful, you know that? They're looking and they're saying, 'Lyla is so pretty!'" She giggles in my ear and hands me her lollipop. "Are you all done?" She nods her head.

"Down, daddy!" She pushes against my chest and tries to get off of my lap. "Down! JoeDoe!" I keep my arm around her waist because with the way she's currently pushing to get off of me, she's going to fall flat on her ass if I let her go. I turn around to see what she might be looking at just to make sure that it actually is Jo that she sees. If it really is Jo, I'll let her down but on the off chance that it's not Jo and just someone that looks like her, I don't want her running to some stranger. Sure enough, Jo's walking up the steps to get onto the patio of the Tiki Bar where Lyla and I are currently sitting. She's alone. She's wearing a pair of blue jean shorts and a lavender t-shirt with a black Cinderella's castle silhouette that I bought for her back at Disney. I thought her mom was supposed to be coming with her, but she's alone. I don't question it though. I just put Lyla down on the ground and keep an eye on her as she runs to Jo with the utmost excitement. "JoeDoe! JoeDoe!"

She's too far away so I can't hear her, but I do watch and see her mouth the words, "Hi Lyla" as she picks Lyla up. Lyla jumped right into her arms and Jo was prepared. The two of them embrace as if it's been months since they've last seen each other as opposed to days. I watch Lyla's mouth move as she talks away, most likely catching Jo up on everything she's missed lately. "I missed you too. Sorry I was too busy to come see you, but I had to work." I hear bits and pieces of their conversation as they get closer to where I'm sitting. Lyla puts her head right on Jo's shoulder and this is the happiest she's looked in a very long time. I'm not only glad that me and Jo worked it out for our own sake, but I'm more glad that we worked it out for Lyla's sake. It's very apparent that she and Jo have a bond that I clearly don't understand. All of a sudden, Jo stops walking and she turns around with Lyla still in her arms. She motions to someone with her head and that's when I literally have to do a double take. The woman that begins walking up the same flight of steps that Jo just came up seriously looks like another Jo. It looks like there's two of them, the one is just taller and skinnier. That HAS to be her mother. If it isn't, then Jo must have a twin sister that I don't know about. "Hey…" She stands next to me with Lyla still in her arms. Instead of giving her a kiss like I want to, I just settle for a hug. I wrap my arm around her and pull her towards me.

"Hey." I really have to fight the urge to kiss her. Not that I'm afraid to kiss her in public, I just don't want to kiss her when I haven't exactly broken the news to Lyla and when I don't even know if she's told her mother about us. We look each other in the eye for a moment and I can tell that she's thinking the same thing as I am. She wants to kiss me too. Damn, I wish I had some alone time with her. She looks away from me first and turns her attention to the tall woman who finally got over to where we're standing after she was lagging behind. She's wearing a pair of jean shorts like Jo is but her outfit is complete with a tank top instead of a t-shirt. I seriously feel like I'm looking at a taller, skinnier, wrinklier version of Jo. They have the same face shape, the same nose, the same ears, the same brunette hair and the same color eyes. The only differences are their eyebrows, their lips, their skin tone and their hair texture. Jo's eyebrows are thicker and shaped more, Jo's lips are way fuller and pinker, Jo's skin is tanner and her mom's hair is actually curly as opposed to Jo's waves. Jo's a lot shorter and she's curvier and her eyelashes are longer. They look EXACTLY alike though, like her mom spit her out.

"Alex, mom…mom, Alex and Lyla." She nonchalantly introduces us and sighs. "Lyla, this is my mommy…this is Jojo's mommy. See?" Jo actually takes the time out to explain it to Lyla, which I'm thankful for. "Say hi to her…Say hi." Lyla waves and I like how Jo knows that she was lucky to get that out of her because she doesn't push her any further.

"Nice to meet you, ma'am…Alex Karev." I offer my hand. I wasn't expecting Jo's mom to look like this. She's totally…hot. Jo mentioned that her mom was a teenager when she had her, so that explains why she looks so young but the woman is kind of a MILF. No wonder her daughter looks the way she does. Jo's friggin' beautiful and I see where she gets it from. I don't know what the hell I was expecting her mom to look like but it wasn't this. I was expecting someone shorter with a little more wrinkles and not-so modern style. I wasn't expecting a woman with a model's body, well-kept hair and shorts with a tank. She doesn't look like a mom. She doesn't have a single strand of grey hair, the only wrinkles on her face are the ones when she smiles and she doesn't have the extra weight that some mothers do from having children. The only kind of color she has seeping in her hair is the blonde roots that are coming in, so she must be naturally blonde. I'm shocked. I wonder exactly how young her mom was when she had her.

"Teresa Wilson." The woman smiles at me, showing off perfectly white teeth and rests her hand in mine. "Terri for short." She's the first woman I can look eye-to-eye with without having to dramatically tilt my head. She's not taller than me but she's almost as tall as I am. "My Jo's told me a lot about you, nice to finally meet the man of discussion." I glance at Jo. She looks like she's so bothered by all of this. She looks like she's watching some kind of sporting event that she doesn't understand. Like she's confused, bored and would rather be doing a million other things. "She didn't tell me you were such a gentleman though…must've left that one out there, Momo." She puts her hand on Jo's shoulder and I've never seen Jo force a smile as hard as she currently is. I wonder why she called Jo "Momo". I'll ask later. She takes her hand off Jo's shoulder and turns her attention to Lyla. "Hey there, cutie."

Jo looks at me like she really wants to either blow up or cry. I wink at her and clear my throat. "So Jo says you live up in New Jersey. Must be nice to get away from up north for a while." I try to start a conversation so that Jo doesn't continue to feel miserable. If my dad wasn't with Michelle, I would totally try and set him and Jo's mom up. Jo's mom is really pretty, if I do say so myself. She's not exactly MY type, but she's dad's type for sure. I'm more into shorter girls, like Jo…and girls with meat on their bones. Jo's not exactly thick, but she's not bony either. She has a nice ass and her rack's pretty good too. She's exactly my type, whereas my dad likes the bony ones. My mom used to be a stick back in the day too. "You're a…teacher, isn't that right?" I turn towards the table and sit down. Jo just glares at me but her mom is oblivious to the tension and she just sits down right across from me. "I think that's what Jo said."

"Yeah…high school Chemistry." She folds her hands. "So what do _you_ do, Alex?" Jo rolls her eyes at the both of us and whispers something to Lyla, which makes Lyla nod. Jo gives me the "See you later" kind of look and walks off with Lyla. I can tell she's just annoyed by the way her mother just started monopolizing me. I kept the mental note that Jo practically hates her mother. I've noticed through our conversations about her that Jo's not particularly fond of her mother and I remember that much. If she needs to get away for a little while, I'll distract her mom for her. I trust her with Lyla, obviously. I know she's going to be okay with Jo for a little while. It's clear to me that her mom wants the chance to talk to me alone anyway. She probably wants to pry and make sure I'm not a serial rapist or a murderer while I'm fixing to date her daughter, and that's fine. If I were talking to my mother, she'd do the same thing. She'd want to sit Jo down and have a talk with her too. I can handle her mother for a few minutes.

"I'm a pediatric surgeon."


	34. Something To Talk About

I lean back, stuff my hands underneath the steaming hot sand and gaze out into the horizon. The water looks really, really blue today for some reason. I mean, the water is always pretty blue but today, it's almost crystal clear and see-through straight to the bottom. I'm so glad Alex decided to take my mom off my hands for a while. I could've sat up there at the table with the two of them while they chatted and acted like they've known each other for years, but I seriously needed a break so I took Lyla with me and I had to come down here. Sometimes I do feel like I'm too hard on my mom. Sometimes I think that I'm just downright disrespectful and rude to her, but today really isn't one of those days. I asked her nicely not to embarrass me and what does she do? She uses one of my humiliating childhood nicknames and she makes it seem like I've told her absolutely nothing about Alex. She's just so embarrassing. Sighing, I tilt my head back to the sky and watch a seagull fly over my head. I kind of wish that it was just me and Alex here today. Don't get me wrong, I'm incredibly grateful that I'm getting to spend time with Lyla once again, but still. I just want alone time with my boyfriend. I don't even feel like we are boyfriend and girlfriend because we literally never spend time together, just me and him. Either Lyla's always around or his dad is always around and this just in, my mom is around. I just want at least an hour alone with him so I can have the chance to actually feel like his girlfriend and not just his friend. I still feel like I'm his old friend and I don't want to feel that way. I just want to hold his hand and kiss him and maybe even hold him in my arms for once. All I'm asking is to hug my boyfriend beyond just the little side-hug that I got when we greeted each other.

The sun is beating down so hot on my skin today that my arms and legs are starting to tingle. Call me weird, but I can always tell when I'm getting a tan. My skin starts tingling from the heat and I just know that it's because I'm changing color. I bring my head back down from looking up at the sky and sigh again. It's a gorgeous day out here today. The part of me that doesn't absolutely detest my mother is glad that I brought her here on a day like this. Bringing her to the beach any other day wouldn't have had the same effect as today. When dealing with Millerton's beach, you have to see it when it's bustling with activity on a warm, sunny day. It's just not the same as if you come on a lukewarm day. "JoeDoe! JoeDoe!" Lyla's voice breaks my thoughts, so I turn my head and look over in the direction that her voice came from. She doesn't have her floaties so I told her to stay close to me and away from the water. She found a tide pool to look at and she was playing over in that the last time I checked on her. She's running over to me from that tide pool and she's holding something in her hand. "JoeDoe!" I don't know when she began calling me "JoeDoe" instead of "DoeDoe" but I won't question it. "Looky!" She makes her way over to me, huffing from being out of breath and holds the thing in her hand out to me. It's a starfish. "It a stawfish!"

"Wow." I take it off of her and poke at it to see if it's alive. It's soaking wet and it still has pretty good suction so I'm guessing that she saw it, plucked it out of its environment and brought it over to me. "You're right, it _is_ a starfish. You're so smart." I hand it back to her. "What else are you finding over there in those tide pools?" I shield my eyes from the sun with my hand and look up at her. She holds the starfish by one of its legs and twists it around and around and around. "Did you give him a name?" She shakes her head and continues to stare at it. "Don't you think you should?" She nods. She bends down and very gently, she situates the starfish in the sand and covers him up. She's being really nice and gentle about it so I can tell that she doesn't want to hurt it. I don't have the heart to tell her that she probably already killed it by taking it out of its natural habitat. She sits down right next to me without any further word and starts rubbing sand all over my leg. "Thank you?"

"I miss you, JoeDoe." She keeps rubbing the sand all over my legs and I don't know why she's doing it but I don't stop her. She seems to be having fun so I might as well just let her. She scoops up a whole handful of sand and piles it on my thigh. "You nebber ebber leave me again, kay? 'Acause I miss you."

"I'm sorry, baby." I take my hand out of the sand and rest it against her head. "I missed you too though. And I promise I'll never leave you again." I stroke her hair and sit back while she now starts to dust the sand off of me. "Can I have a hug?" She nods and crawls closer to me so she can wrap her arms around me comfortably. It kind of hurts my heart to hear her say that she missed me. Well now that Alex and I have made our relationship status official, hopefully I'll be able to see her every day. But on the off chance that we break up or anything, I think I'll still make it a point to walk down and see her. I thought Alex was just being dramatic when he said that Lyla really missed me but I can see now that he wasn't. He was being serious and if her running into my arms as soon as I stepped into the Tiki Bar wasn't proof enough, hearing her say it the way she just did is. She wraps her arms around my neck and climbs into my lap. "Aww..." I thought she was just going to give me a little hug but she's squeezing me hard and she does NOT want to let me go. I adjust my position so I can support all her weight and put my arms around her torso as well. "Jojo's sorry. She'll never go away like that again."

"Pwomish?" She rests her head on my shoulder and loosens her grip around my neck just a little. "I weally miss you. I sad wiffout you." She lets my neck go, leans back to look me in my eyes and starts messing with my cheeks. She's poking at my cheeks with her fingers and babbling away. "I thinked you was comin back but daddy…him said…him said no. Him said you was goin' away and he no know when I gets to see you again." She moves on to my hair and starts touching that too. "I miss you but my dada say I not gon see you a lot. You and dada fight? And not fwends no more?"

"I promise I'll never go away for days again, okay? No matter what happens between me and your daddy, I promise. Me and you will always be buddies, baby. Okay?" She seems really upset by all of this, so I rub her back and put my cheek against her cheek. Now that I'm hearing all of this and seeing the tears well up in her pretty green eyes, I must say that Alex had every right to be mad at me. He had every single right to be mad at me. I really had no idea that me stepping away caused all this much damage. She really did miss me. "Me and your daddy are still friends and even if we're not, me and you can still be friends. Don't worry about anything that happens between me and your daddy. I won't go away anymore. You hear me?" She takes her hands away from my hair and looks away. "Hey…Hey Lyla, look at me." She shakes her head. "Look at me, baby…please?" She reluctantly picks her head up and looks at me. "I won't go away anymore. Gimme another hug."

She wraps her arms back around my neck but before she squeezes, she puckers her lips and kisses me on my cheek like she did back at Disney. I hug her back again and sigh. Alex and I really need to talk…alone…without anybody else around. I know he said that he doesn't want to set any boundaries that will prohibit me from getting too close to Lyla, but I really think he should. I'm starting to feel like I'm getting a little too close to her again and that's not at all good. I just don't want to risk Alex saying what he said to me again. I just need to know if it's okay if she kisses me. I'm not running around and kissing her cheek back because I don't really know if that could be considered inappropriate or not. I sigh once more and decide that I should get up. I can't hug her, hold her and comfort her any longer because if I do, I might feel tempted to kiss her cheek back and I just don't want to do that right now. I shrug her arms from around my body and prepare myself to stand up. "Where goin' JoeDoe?" She looks so worried, like I might leave her again.

"We're gonna go in the water. You want to?" I try my best to disguise the fact that I'm slightly uncomfortable with all of this because it's not her fault. It's not her fault that I feel like I might be getting too attached and for that reason, I refuse to be in a bad mood with her. I unbutton my shorts and kick them off. I take my t-shirt off too. "Wanna get your feet wet?" She nods her head and the worry on her face disappears once she knows that I'm not leaving. I kick off my sandals and before I can bend down to take hers off as well, she plops down in the sand and starts taking her sandals off. She's struggling to unbuckle the strap but I step back and let her do it herself. She gets one off and starts fighting with the other. She finally gets it off and stands back up. "You ready?" She nods again and offers me her hand. I grab her hand and start walking with her towards the water. I've noticed that she stops talking when she feels threatened or uncomfortable. I think she's a bit uncomfortable at the moment with there being a bunch of other people surrounding us in the water. "…So what'd you do while I was away?" I squeeze her hand and stop walking once the water is up at her knees. Maybe if I have a conversation with her, she'll learn to forget about all these other people around. "You and daddy do anything fun?"

"Daddy had to um…him had work a lot." She lets my hand go, which sends a brief wave of panic over my body but it goes away just as quickly as it came. I'd be more scared if she let my hand go and ran off. She just let it go and reached it out to touch a wave. "But I do a lot of fun things wiff pappy. We colored pishures and I worked a car at his um…his car store." She squats down and lets the waves hit her in the chest. "I color you a pishure JoeDoe. It um…of me and you and daddy when we was at Cinnawella."

"Really?!" Since the water literally only comes up just past my ankles, I sit down flat on my ass so I can relax in the water and watch her at the same time. "Do you still have it? Because that sounds really nice, I wanna see it." I have noticed that while I've been down here with Lyla, a couple people have been staring at us. It's not a lot of people and honestly, it's hardly noticeable but I've been on my toes with everything so of course I've noticed. I'm wondering if maybe they're just staring because they know that Lyla's Alex's daughter and I'm with her or if they're staring because Lyla's so cute. I don't know why they stare. I wish I did…but I don't. "What did we all look like in your picture? Did we all look cute?"

"Mhm." She's not facing me but she's still talking to me and that's good. I'd rather her talk to me than shut down completely and be silent. She's holding her head up so the waves don't catch her in the face. She's just letting the water hit her from her neck down. "Daddy was holdin' my hand and you was holdin' my hand too and you was happy and daddy was happy but drawed me wiff a frowny face 'acause I'm lonely."

"You drew yourself with a frowny face because you're lonely?" That just made me so sad. I can't believe she just said that. "Come here, Lyla. Come see me." She turns her head. "Come see me." I hold my arms out. She stands up straight and wades in the water over towards me. Like she did when we were sitting in the sand, she climbs into my lap and I flinch for a moment. My chest and my stomach aren't wet since the water hasn't hit me that high up but her entire body is wet and the shock of her being wet against me just gave me chills. Still and yet, I wrap my arms around her waist and hold her. "Why are you lonely, sweetie?" I fix the straps of her bathing suit because the waves knocked them down a little bit when they were breaking over her, and her chest was hanging out. "Hmmm? Why are you lonely?" I keep my arms tight around her because even though the water is just barely touching my waist, it's coming up well past hers.

"I miss my fwend Coey. I miss payin' wiff her and habbin' fun." She's still reaching forward and splashing the water. "I wish I had another fwend but I don't so I'm lonely."

"Aww, I'm sorry." I rest my hands at my sides and run my fingers through the water too. I guess I can understand why she's lonely. She's four years old and the only human contact she has is with her father, her grandfather and me. She made a friend at Disney World and she had to leave that friend and she doesn't really have the means to make any other friends. See, this is why I wish Alex would set boundaries even though he doesn't want to. I need him to set these boundaries because I don't know if me suggesting that maybe Lyla should have more opportunities to actually make friends is going to make him say what he said to me again. I need boundaries. She's making my heart ache. "But guess what though? Eventually, you're gonna start school…and you're gonna make a bunch of friends. I'm sorry that Chloe doesn't live closer but you're gonna make more friends eventually." I need to talk to Alex. I don't want to go up there and interrupt him and Terri's conversation but I think it's pretty imperative that I talk to my boyfriend right now. "You wanna go see your daddy? And my mommy?"

"Yeah." She leans forward so she can stand up. "Is your mommy nice, JoeDoe?"

"Yeah, my mommy's very nice." I help her stand up first and once she's sturdy, I stand up too. "She's been my mommy for a long time and she was always really nice to me. She used to play with my hair and stuff…did your mommy play with your hair?" I bend down and pick her up so the sand doesn't stick to her feet and make her uncomfortable when I stick her sandals back on her.

"…I don't really member." She scratches her head. "I know her would gimme tea parties and stuff but that's all." That's typical, I guess. That she's forgetting her mother, I mean. How much does anybody remember from when they were three? Four even? I know I don't remember much from when I was three and four. Her mom's been gone for eight months now. I'm even starting to forget some of the things that Mark used to say and do and I'm 29 years old. She's only four so I can imagine how fuzzy her memories of her mother must be. "…Her maked cookies though. I member that."

"I bet her cookies were yummy, huh?" All of a sudden, my hip gets all hot and I feel something dripping down to my thigh. "…Lyla, did you pee on me?" She shakes her head but I can feel something running down past my hip, past my thigh and all the way to my ankle. "Are you sure? Did you pee on Jojo?" She nods her head this time around. "…That's nice." I whisper to myself. "…You're supposed to tell me when you have to pee pee, right?" She nods again. "Because we're gonna try to go on the potty, right?" She nods once more. "Don't pee on me anymore."

"I won't."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"I'm a pediatric surgeon." As I fold my hands, I make sure to keep my elbows off the table and appear mannerly. I don't think Jo's told her mother that were officially dating just yet but in case she did, I want her to like me and I want her to think that I'm good enough for her daughter. When I tell her what I do for a living, she raises her eyebrows and nods her head. I can tell she wasn't necessarily expecting me to say that I'm a pediatrician, but I like to think that she's surprised but _pleasantly_ surprised. "I work up in Pensacola at the children's hospital. I'm a general surgeon…which just means that I take care of all internal organs aside from the heart, lungs and brain." I explain; not because I think her mom is stupid but because most people that aren't in the medical field don't really know what general surgery is. "…All on little kids." I add. She smiles and looks exactly like Jo when she does. She sits back in her chair with her arms folded across her chest and tilts her head. "It's a tough job sometimes…dealing with sick kids but I love it."

"You have to love something like that, I guess. I can't imagine why anyone would take up a career in something like that if they didn't love it." She tucks her hair behind her ears and rests her chin in the palm of her hand. "Did you always know that you wanted to work with kids? Or was that something you just discovered when you were going through medical school?" Okay, now I officially feel like I'm talking to a mother. I didn't feel like it for a second there because she IS so young and she's so friendly but with the questions beginning to come, I feel it now. "What made you decide to work with children? Soft at heart?" She grins.

I smirk and run my hands through my hair. And here I was thinking that this was going to be easy. I was a real charmer back when I had to meet Jenna's parents…then again, I was about 15 years old and they thought it was just puppy love. "Well I originally wanted to be a plastic surgeon. You know, face lifts, breast implants and liposuctions? Yeah, I wanted to do that. But you know…when you decide to go into the surgical field, you have to do a residency before you specialize and during my residency, I was on Pediatrics for about a month and I had an excellent teacher and I fell in love with it, I guess. And Peds is elite. It's hardcore stuff, not soft stuff. You gotta be pretty tough to look a dying kid in the eye, you know? It's cutting edge." I lean back against my chair. "I _do_ have a soft spot for children though."

She full out laughs as if I said something hilarious, which makes me laugh too. "That's what I thought." She nods her head. "You seem like you've got it all together for yourself and you're only what? 30?" I nod the answer to that question. "And how old is your baby girl? You had her pretty young then."

"My wife and I had her when we were 26. She wasn't exactly planned but we were married and we always knew we wanted kids so she wasn't unwanted. Surprise…but not unwanted." I catch myself thinking that she might've been judging me for only being 26 and relatively unestablished in my career when we had Lyla but once I see the look in her eyes, I can tell that she's not judging and that's when I remember that she wouldn't have anything against young parents. She was young when she had Jo too. Way, way younger than 26 it seems. Jo's 29 and her mom doesn't look a day over 30 herself so I'm guessing she probably thinks my 26 is an appropriate age. "I do wish that I was more established in my career when we had her but it seems to have all worked out fine."

"At least your baby's taken care of. That's really all that matters in the end, right?" She unfolds her arms and rests them on her lap. "And a gorgeous little girl you have too. She's beautiful. I'm sure you get that a lot though, right?"

I smile. "Yeah. In the grocery store, at the gas station…pretty much anywhere I take Lyla, someone has to tell me how cute she is." I shrug my shoulders to make it seem like it's not a big deal but in all seriousness, I love it when people tell me how beautiful my baby is. Of course I already know. Lyla's absolutely beautiful, the most beautiful little girl in this world in my eyes. But it's always nice to have someone reiterate what I already know. "…Your daughter's not that bad either." I raise an eyebrow. "I'm sure you get that a lot too…"

She smiles very slightly, as if I just called _her_ beautiful as opposed to Jo. "Yeah, Josephine's okay." _Josephine?_ Her name is _JOSEPHINE_? I always thought that maybe "Jo" was short for something but I never knew for sure and I never would've thought it was short for JOSEPHINE. Oh, that's so much leverage. I can use that against her. HA! JOSEPHINE. "Jo's a very pretty girl but her attitude and her temper…" She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. "That attitude of hers makes her ugly. And her temper's no better. I've been trying to teach her to control it ever since she was little but sometimes…I just wanna wring the girl's neck, she's so evil."

"Jo's evil?" I tilt my head. I would've never guessed. She's always so soft spoken, mild-mannered and polite around me. "I can't see it." I shake my head.

She bursts out in hysterical laughter once again. "Josephine is an EVIL child. Her attitude sucks. I can't believe she hasn't shown her true colors. You just wait. Something'll piss her off, make her mad, irritate her…something won't go her way. Just wait. She's evil. She's been evil since the day she was born. I don't understand her one bit and she's my child. She's enigmatic to me because I don't understand how a girl can be that gorgeous and have an attitude that funky. Her attitude is absolutely horrifying, Alex. Horrifying." Jo's really that bad? I would've never guessed. But I like hearing about her. I like hearing about how she's always been because I don't know much about her. It's relatively useless to try and talk to Jo about anything because she's so guarded and she doesn't tell me anything. I wonder how much I can get out of her mom. "She's sweet as pie when she wants to be but her mouth…" She continues shaking her head.

"Yeah?" I raise both my eyebrows. "She's always so nice to me."

"She's sweet when she wants to be." She folds her hands this time around. "Jo's…she's a different kind of girl. She's very…independent. She's always been that way, ever since she was little. She likes to do things on her own, take care of things on her own and be on her own. She never wanted my help when she was walking, never wanted my help when she was potty training…she's just very independent. And she hates being vulnerable so she'll put on a brave face all the time but she's not as strong as she tries to seem. She's actually very fragile and she's very, very, very sensitive. She takes everything to heart but her biggest issue is that she…she bottles. She bottles everything up and eventually she explodes and when she does, everything comes at you and you're given a big pile of issues to sort through." I start laughing, which makes her smile. "I'm being serious though. She used to hold everything in and act like nothing bothered her but out of the blue, something little will set her off and she'd vent and let everything out and I'd find out that she's still harping about something that happened six or seven months ago. She likes to handle things on her own but she never can." I have a feeling that she can rant about Jo all day and me? I can listen all day. I like learning about her. "But she's so sweet and she has a really good heart. And she's always so hard on herself about everything. There were times when I had to tell her to chill out. She's hard on herself about every little thing. If she couldn't learn to ride a bicycle in an hour, she'd call herself a failure. She'd hide her report cards from me if she had a B on them because she thought she'd let me down with a B. Things like that…she's so hard on herself."

"Now I can see that." I nod. I kind of got that vibe from Jo back in Disney when she had that nightmare that I had to wake her up from. She just kept telling me that it was her fault and she was so stupid and stuff and she was really beating herself up. As far as her actually having a bad attitude and a mean streak? I haven't seen that side of Jo and I hope nothing happens to the point where I ever have to see that side of her. I can totally see her bottling things up though and I can see her being hard on herself. I've observed that much about her. "Was she a good kid growing up though?"

"She was a great kid. We had a rough patch when she was about 14-15. She would sneak out and hang out with her friends…disrespect her teachers, get suspended from school for fighting, but she was perfect. She had a little bit of an issue with drugs for a while there. She'd sneak out and smoke marijuana with her friends but that's as far as that ever went. But her GPA was always perfect, she wasn't like the kids that would go out and hang on the street corners having sex, she wasn't much of a partier. I caught her sneaking in the house once when she was 15, I whooped her up real good and she stopped smoking after that. She was a perfect angel after that, for the most part. She could get a little mouthy here and there but I always had that under control." She scared me for a minute there when she said Jo had a problem with drugs. She made it sound like she was out shooting up heroin and snorting cocaine as opposed to just smoking weed. I've smoked weed back in my teenage years, it's not that big a deal. Everyone does it. "Jo was a great kid aside from her anger."

"She has legit anger problems?" I want to know more. I want to know all I need to know. I want to know everything about her, everything there is to know about Jo. She's kind of a mystery to me thus far. I never actually realized how little I know about her. I always thought I knew something about her but I realize how that I practically know nothing. "Should I be worried?"

"Oh no." She waves her hand and shakes her head. "I mean, she CAN be dangerous. When she gets angry enough, she can be dangerous. But I've been teaching her how to control it since she was very little and she has an okay handle on it now. She knows how to nip it in the bud before it gets out of control. The best thing is to just leave her alone when she gets mad because if you make her mad enough, she WILL hit you. It takes her a while to get that angry though but once she's to that point, you can forget about calming her down. There is no calming Josephine down when she gets to a certain point. You have to just wait for her to calm herself down because YOU can't do it. Ask her 9th grade English teacher what Jo's like when you won't leave her alone, she'll tell you." My jaw drops. I don't even know what she did but whatever she did, she did it to a teacher. A TEACHER. "Broke the teacher's nose…with a book." I gasp. "Teacher wouldn't leave her alone. I don't remember what exactly Jo did, but she did something to piss the teacher off and when the teacher called her out, she put her head down to avoid an argument but the teacher kept picking with her and picking with her and she tossed her five pound English book at his face…broke his nose. I couldn't even get mad at her for it because he wouldn't leave her alone. You have to leave her alone."

"I can understand that." I shrug my shoulders. "I have my own bad temper." I admit. "…She seems really good though. I have pretty good radar for crappy people and I don't get that vibe from her. She's done a lot of amazing things in the two months that I've known her. Like she um…wrote letters with my daughter. My wife passed a while ago and my daughter was having a tough time coping with it. And Jo came up with a solution. She had my daughter write letters to her mother that she attached to balloons and she sent them up to the sky. I thought that was pretty neat of her. She seems really…great."

"Are you dating my daughter, Alex?" She's very blunt with it and straight to the point. So no, Jo hasn't told her about it. Since she's asking, I think it's safe to assume that she hasn't told her about the fact that we're officially boyfriend and girlfriend. A slight, toothless grin spreads across my face and I look down at the chipped wooden table. "Don't lie to me, Alex. You can't lie to me. My daughter is one of the most convincing liars on this _planet_ and not even she can lie to me. I'm good with deciphering lies. So tell me…are you dating my baby?" I slowly bring my eyes up to meet hers and I still have that smirk on my face. She's smiling and showing off her perfect white teeth again. "I knew it. She's all giddy when she talks about you and you're all interested in hearing about her. I already knew it." I pinch the bridge of my nose and chuckle. I don't know if Jo's going to be mad at me for the fact that her mother didn't know that we were dating before she started talking to me and now after talking to me, she knows. She's probably gonna think I told her but in truth, I didn't. She figured it out. Her mom is very smart, by the way. "She's been through a lot already so don't hurt her, okay?" I sit back and say nothing. "I heard you'd be the one to understand though…been through a lot too, I've heard."

"Yeah." I mumble. "My wife died eight months ago too. She had cancer…it got her." I peel some of the chipped paint off the table with my thumbnail. I thought I was going to get out of this talk without having to mention Jenna but I think I was foolish to have thought that. Maybe I was just hoping. I sigh. "It's been rough, you know? But Jo's kinda been helping us through it. At first I didn't even know what to do with my daughter but…she kinda made it easier."

"I think you've made it easier on her too." For the first time during our entire conversation, we're being very serious. Not that our conversation wasn't serious from the start because it was, it's just that it got a hell of a lot more serious just now. "I've noticed a huge change in Jo's behavior. When I would call her a few months ago, she wouldn't even want to talk to me. She's still a little bit standoffish towards me but I can actually get something out of her these days. She's not so depressed and miserable…and I think that has a lot to do with you and your little girl." Still staring down at the table, I just nod my head. I wish this conversation didn't take this kind of a turn. "You know Alex...there's nothing wrong with leaning on somebody else for support. And there's nothing wrong with being happy about it. You're a lot like my daughter that way. She feels so guilty about being happy again but I'll tell you like I told her. You can't spend the rest of your life alone just because you lost someone you loved. Sure it's probably easier for you to mope around and dwell on the fact that you had love once and lost it, but you know how much damage you're doing to yourself? Do you really think your wife would want you to spend the rest of your life alone? It's okay to be happy again. Nobody's penalizing you for being happy again. You and your daughter both deserve to have something to smile about."

"Yeah but I just don't know how to feel like I'm not replacing my wife, you know? Not necessarily with me…because there will always be that space in my heart for my wife but with Lyla…she's too young to understand a lot and she'll forget her mother eventually. I have a kid to think about too and nobody understands that she comes first. I have to think about her before I make decisions and even though I really like Jo, I can't just…jump into something that quick. I feel guilty not because I'm happy again but because I feel like a bad dad. I don't really think that anybody understands that my life isn't really my life anymore. I have to do things based off what's good for my daughter and nobody gets that." I sigh.

"Nobody gets that?" She sounds like she's challenging me but I shake my head anyway. "Nobody?" I shrug. "Because I happen to understand perfectly where you're coming from." I pick my head up. "I sure do. I had my Jo when I was just sixteen years old and I've been doing it on my own ever since. Her daddy paid two months' worth of child support before he up and walked out of her life when she was two years old. I haven't heard anything from him since then. I did it on my own and it was hard. And I know what you mean when you say you don't feel like a good parent when you slip up and do things that you don't think are right for your child. When Josephine was six years old, she saw the inside of her first homeless shelter and I felt like a horrible mother. I hated the fact that my baby had to eat food that was cooked by strangers. I resented myself every time I filled up the sink with warm water and stood her on the back of the toilet seat so I could bathe her. And there were many of nights I slept on the floor so my baby could move around freely on the twin-size bed that we had to share. She didn't have a TV, Barbie dolls, nice clothes. Her shoes were worn down to the soles of her feet and I resented myself every single day for that. I felt like the worst kind of parent. But even when you're down in those kinds of situations, you have to do what's best for your baby. You're right, you're not living for yourself when you're a single parent. You make decisions based off what you think is right for your child and if nobody gets that, I do. I get that perfectly well." So much wisdom just came out of her mouth and she's only 44 or 45 years old. She's probably so wise because she's been through a lot in life. "Just sitting here talking to you, I can tell that you're not a bad father. You're all your little girl's got in life anymore and no matter what, you'll always be her superhero for that. There's nothing you can do that'll tarnish her image of you as her father. You don't need to feel like a bad father for bringing another woman into her life. It only becomes unacceptable when you're dragging women in and out of her life and I don't forsee you doing that. It's alright to be happy again."

"You did all that at 16? I'm 30 and I'm just barely making it as a single father." I sigh. "I really need things to work with Jo though. My daughter isn't the easiest to win over and Jo's already done that. I just can't see myself bringing another woman into her life after she's already established a bond and a connection with Jo. She has a bond and a connection with Jo and if me and your daughter don't work out…I probably won't ever be able to date again because I just can't see my daughter falling in love with someone the way she fell in love with Jo. Before I met Jo…I wasn't ready to move on. But now…she's the only woman I can move on to. Because the next girl has to make it work with my child and I don't think anybody but Jo can do that. I knew she was the one I needed to move on to when I saw her taping letters to balloons, Miss Terri. She established a bond with my daughter before she even established a relationship with me. How do I walk away from that if we don't work out?"

"Well I'll tell you one thing about my daughter. When she loves you…she loves you forever. Jo's got a big heart but it's not easy for her to fall in love. Her heart is big but it's closed off and she doesn't let just anybody in. But once you're in? You're in forever. When she falls for you, it's forever. And I can see it on her face that she might not be in love with you, but she's in love with that little girl of yours and as long as she's in love with her, she's always going to be in your life. She may act like she's giving up but believe me, she won't. There's no possible way she'll let herself give up. You never have to worry about her not being in your life if that's what you're worried about. As far as a relationship goes? You're both coming off hard times and whether you like it or not, you both need each other. You said yourself that she's helped you realize that you can move on and you've done the same for her. Do you believe in fate, Alex?" I honestly shrug my shoulders. I don't know what I believe in anymore. "I do." She nods once. "And I don't think it's a coincidence that your wife and my daughter's husband passed on the same day. I don't think it's a coincidence that you lost a wife and a mother and my daughter lost a husband and a baby. And I surely don't think it's a coincidence that of all places for my daughter to end up in Florida, she ends up in this sleepy town that's not even on the map."

"…Maybe you're right." I peel the paint off the table some more.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"I hope we're not interrupting anything." I don't particularly care if we are interrupting anything. I've given them like 45 minutes of alone time to talk, they should've gotten all their talking out. It's not like they've known each other for years or anything. "But Alex, I have to…" My voice trails off as soon as I notice the looks on both their faces. My mom is smiling and Alex seems to be pretty chipper himself. Something went on here and I'm not sure how much I like it. I remember that I'm holding Lyla's hand and for that reason, I take a breath to cool myself down. I feel like flipping out. My mom is so goddamn annoying. I can only imagine what she told him about me. I can tell that she told him SOMETHING though. The look on their faces is as if they have some sort of running inside joke. "Alex, I want to talk to you." Lyla lets go of my hand and climbs up on her dad's lap. They both just look at me and that's when it's clear. I know exactly what happened. "…You told. Didn't you?" I fold my arms and clench my jaw. "I thought we said we weren't gonna tell!"

"Oh hush, Jo." My mom giggles. "He didn't tell me, I figured it out all on my own." She rests her hand on the small of my back and rubs. "Take a chill pill, Momo."

"Stop calling me that!" I reach back and shove her hand away. I'm really about to snap out and blow up on everyone sitting at this table except for Lyla. I bawl my hands up into fists and bite down hard on my bottom lip as my jaw begins to tremble and my eyes fill up with tears. I'm not crying because I'm upset or hurt, I'm crying because I'm so pissed off that I can't do anything BUT cry. I hate the fact that I cry when I'm frustrated because it makes people think that they hurt my feelings when in reality, I'm just trying to refrain myself from committing murder. "This is exactly why I didn't want you to come here! All you do is embarrass me, pry and stick your nose where it doesn't belong." I talk to my mom through clenched teeth and turn to Alex. "And all I ever asked was for you NOT to tell her and what do you do?!" All I do is blink and my face is flooded with tears. I'm really fixing to punch a hole through the table or something so instead of blowing up and showing Alex how I REALLY act when I'm angry, I turn around and stomp back out of the Tiki Bar.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

The door to the patio slams shut behind Jo when she storms out of it and the little table that was once filled with laughter and serious conversation is now filled with awkward silence. Something told me she was going to be mad about the fact that her mom knows we're dating now. I don't know why she gets so easily offended and irritated with her mother though. Jo is so easily aggravated by her mother and I really don't understand it. I think her mom is pretty cool. Miss Terri slides her chair out and begins to get up. "Excuse me, Alex. I'll be right back." I don't know if I should just let her go. After all, she's been her mother's child for 29 years and if anybody knows how to handle Jo when she lashes out in fits of rage like she just did, it should be her mother right? But I should probably learn how to handle Jo, shouldn't I? If we're going to be girlfriend and boyfriend, I should learn. And it's me that she's mad at because she thinks I told her mom. I should go. Sending her mother would probably be the most logical thing to do but I should go.

"No, let me." I scoot my own chair out. "I'll be right back, Ly. Sit here with Jojo's mommy okay? Be really good for me. I'll be right back." I lean to the side and give her a kiss on her saltwater tasting cheek. Jo's mom nods her head and leans across the table while I hand Lyla off to her. Surprisingly enough, Lyla doesn't make a peep and she doesn't ask any questions. She might be sleepy but I don't really know. "I should go." I stand up. "Can you just watch her for me?" She holds Lyla on her lap as naturally as possible and nods her head at me. "Thanks." I mutter and hurry off in the direction that Jo went.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"You didn't go far…" I hear both his voice and his footsteps approaching me but I keep my back turned and my feet buried deep in the sand. I sniff whatever leakage that came out of my nose back up and inside and clear my throat. "I was thinking I'd have to search all over the beach for you…you didn't go far." I don't know if I'm glad that he's the one that came to see if I was okay or if I'm severely annoyed because he's the reason I had to walk away in the first place. I'm just so annoyed with everything right now and I can't take it. I'm annoyed with the way my mom keeps touching me, I'm annoyed with the way she keeps telling everyone my embarrassing nicknames and I'm annoyed with the way she keeps inserting herself in me and Alex's business. More so than that, I'm annoyed that he told her that we're dating. That's ONE thing I wanted to keep to myself until I was ready to tell her myself and he freaking blew it. I'm so annoyed that I don't know what to do. I was really expecting my mom to be the one to come and check on me though, so I guess Alex is a nice substitute. I watch the sand spew out in front of me from him kicking it and eventually, he sits down right next to me. "Are you too mad to talk to me?" I bite down on my lip to keep another round of tears from spilling over and concentrate on a seagull that's walking about ten feet away from us. "Then let me do the talking." He walks his hand over a couple inches and rests it on top of mine. "…I didn't tell her. She figured it out and I couldn't lie to her. She asked me and I didn't say anything at all. I just smiled…and I probably shouldn't have smiled but I couldn't help it. I always smile when someone mentions you, it's just a habit." I roll my eyes at how cheesy he's being. "But I didn't tell her. Your mom is just so…she's really….she's…she's…" He stumbles over the right words to say. "Very persuasive."

I'll give him that. My mom's like the human lie detector. Being my mother made her an expert on how to tell if someone's lying because growing up, I was the biggest liar there is. My eyes wander around the shore just so I can avoid eye contact with him. I notice that way more people than just the couple that were staring at me and Lyla are staring now. The fact that they're gawking at us isn't helping the fact that I'm already irritated. It's not helping me calm down. I just want to stand up and scream "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU ALL LOOKING AT?" but I remain seated and silent. "Why do you get so angry with her? She loves you a lot…you should hear the way she talks about you." I say nothing back to him. "Are you really not going to talk to me?" I clench my jaw. "…Well on the bright side, I really like her." I roll my eyes again. He would, wouldn't he? Then again, everybody loves my mother. They don't have to live with her, that's why. They don't have to deal with that bitch on a daily basis. "And I think we have her blessing…" Like I give a shit if we did or if we didn't. She hated Mark but I still married him. I could give a shit if my mom likes Alex or not. She's not the one dating him. "Please talk to me, Jo." I exhale sharply. He scoots closer to me and tilts his head. "Can I have a kiss at least?" I bite my top lip now because my bottom one has gone numb. If I won't talk to you, what makes you think I'm gonna kiss you? "From earlier? You know you wanted to kiss me earlier…" He's begging now and I still don't care. I'm too annoyed for anything right now. "How about you kiss me just to piss all these girls around here off?" Well that might be nice…if they're staring, we might as well give them a show… "I don't think they know that I'm taken. We should let them know." I'll think about it. "I've been dying to kiss you all day. You gonna make me wait?" I said I'll think about it. "Just a little one…" He reaches over with one of his hands and touches the corner of my mouth. "You have sexy lips."

I turn my head and as soon as I do, a goofy little smile comes across his face and even though I didn't want to, I can't help but smile too. He keeps his hand braced against my jawline as I tilt my head to the side. Our lips meet gently at first but once we've established the kiss, I push against his mouth hard and force him to open his mouth. As if he hates being the submissive one, he shoves his tongue in my mouth and initiates the kiss deeper and reestablishes dominance. His tongue is soft and gentle as it aggressively explores every inch of my mouth. I can taste his saliva against my tongue and it tastes like a sweet mint. I don't know why but every time I kiss Alex, I just have to touch him. I put my hand on the back of his head. I think it's a security thing, maybe. I just don't want him to decide when he's ready to stop kissing me. I have to get my entire kiss out before he pulls away and if I don't, I get extremely disappointed. If my hands are on the back of his head, I can control when the kiss is done. It's something about his lips and the tenderness of his tongue that just sucks me in and makes me never want to stop. It's our first french kiss as boyfriend and girlfriend and although nothing else today felt different as boyfriend and girlfriend, this kiss surely feels different. It's like a firework show going off in my gut. I had so much energy bottled up inside me and it's all being released in this kiss. For some reason, this kiss feels better than any other kiss. Maybe because it's not practically forbidden anymore. He's my boyfriend and I get to kiss him like this whenever I feel like it. God, that feels good to know.

I curl my fingers through his fluffy, soft hair and remove my tongue from his mouth to end the kiss. I try to pull away completely but before I do, he pecks me on my lips just one more time. Like he did back in Disney, he traces the contours of my lips with the tip of his thumb after the kiss, which sends chills shooting up my spine. He drives me crazy when he does that. He fashions a half-smile at me and takes his thumb away from my mouth. I lick my lips to get every single bit of his mouth inside of mine and turn my head so I'm facing forward again. I put my head on his shoulder and he lets me. Once I tune back into my surroundings, that's when I notice that everyone is trying to pretend like they weren't just watching us. You ever see someone look away after you catch them staring? That's what most people are doing but there are some of them that are still looking, their jaws still dropped all the way to the ground. I crack a smile, turn my head slightly and plant a kiss in the crook of Alex's neck just so they know that yeah, he's mine. He's ALL mine.

And I'm afraid that we've given the town something to talk about.


	35. The Infamous Mill

"So how long do you think it's gonna take for word to get around town?" She looks down at the container of Italian ice in her hand and stabs her spoon into the cherry flavored treat. We started to go back to the Tiki Bar with Lyla and Terri but before we did, I realized that I'm not quite ready to give up my alone time with Jo just yet. I'm sure Lyla's doing just fine up there with Terri and she'll be fine for a few more minutes. I hardly ever get to be alone with Jo and I wouldn't exactly call this a date but I still treated her to some Italian ice from the vendor next to the boardwalk. "I'll give it a week…two weeks tops." She spoons some ice in her mouth and walks in stride with me. I think we're going back to the Tiki Bar now. We've been alone for about half an hour or something like that and I can tell Jo thinks it's time for us to get back. I have to admit that she's probably right. Although I'm sure Terri is taking great care of Lyla, she's undoubtedly wondering where we're at by now. Something I learned today about Jo that I really like is that she doesn't feel the need to constantly show PDA. We kissed on the beach and that was enough for her. Ever hear the saying, "if looks could kill"? Well if looks could kill, Jo would've been dead half an hour ago when we kissed. She's been getting death glares from women all over this beach and she hasn't even acknowledged any of them. It's as if she can care less or she really hasn't noticed. Saying she hasn't noticed is impossible though. The women are so blatant and obvious with their eye rolls and nasty looks that she has HAD to notice. I'm guessing she just doesn't care.

"I think a week is pushing it. I'll give it 'til the end of tomorrow. Millerton is small and there isn't much gossip." I place my wager and take a step closer to her as we walk past a group of teenage boys. It's also not much of a secret that men stare at Jo. There aren't as many men that stare at her than there are women that stare at me, but she surely does attract attention. All the other times I observed men looking at her, I didn't really care because it wasn't really my issue but as her boyfriend, I'm kind of sensitive to it now. Nobody's been looking at her today, fortunately but I still want to be close to her as we walk past a group of men. She sighs and takes another bite of her ice cream. "…You okay?" I brush against her shoulder just to let her know that she can talk to me if she needs to. I think I like to show more PDA than Jo does but I'm trying to respect what she wants by touching her without actually holding her hand and kissing her and stuff. I'm still having a hard time feeling like I'm her boyfriend but again, we haven't even been dating a full day yet and I suppose that the boyfriend/girlfriend feelings will come eventually. "Does it bother you to be the center of attention?" She shrugs. "You can tell me if it does."

"Not really." She shakes her head and takes another bite. She licks her lips and turns her head to look at me. "It doesn't bother me to be the center of attention but I don't really like for everyone to know my business. I kind of thought that if I kissed you like that, the stares would stop…and they did." She turns her attention back to her carton of Italian ice and swirls her spoon around in it. I'm starting to regret not getting any of my own. I didn't really want any when she was ordering it but she made it look really good. "They stopped staring at _you_ , at least." She scoops up some, holds it to her mouth but doesn't take a bite. She sighs and puts the scoop right back. "You'd think I'd be used to people staring at me by now but I guess I'm not." I brush against her shoulder again. "I left Massachusetts to get away from the stares…it's kind of surreal to have to deal with it here too."

I kind of feel bad that she has to deal with this. I'm pretty much used to it and honestly, when I was with Jenna, they didn't stare much at all. I don't know why they gave Jenna more respect than they give Jo. Probably because Jenna was my wife but I still feel like there should be some level of respect given to poor Jo. When I was with Jenna, there would be stares but not this many and they weren't as blatant. I've been single for eight months, maybe the women of Millerton just got so used to seeing me single that they just can't respect another woman. They need to learn how to respect Jo though because as far as I'm concerned, she's not going anywhere. Unless… "…Do you want to break up?" I ask. I don't know much about what her life was like back in Massachusetts but I imagine it was pretty horrible for her to just want to up and move. I can't imagine why she'd want to deal with this here in her new home and more importantly, it's all my fault. I wouldn't be surprised if she decided she doesn't want to deal with this because in all honesty, she doesn't have to. "I'll understand if you do." I'll be upset as hell but I'll understand.

"Who said anything about breaking up?" She turns her head towards me again and tilts it downwards. "Alex, I can handle a few dirty looks; they're not gonna make me break up with you." I take a deep breath and exhale, full of relief. Part of me knew that she wasn't going to say yes and just break it off right here right now, but a piece of me thought she might've decided that this isn't worth it. I'm finally starting to be happy again after eight months of being miserable without Jenna. I guess I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop because thinks don't go smoothly for me as of late. Lately, things go sour for me and today has been close to perfection so far so I'm just sort of expecting something to turn out shitty. "It's nothing compared to the looks I used to get back in Chamberlain."

I grab onto her hand and pull her over towards the sand since we're getting close to being back at the Tiki Bar. I'm still not ready to relinquish my alone time with her and I'm still fairly certain that Lyla's fine with Jo's mom. She looks at me with confusion written clear across her face so once we get to a nice, vacant, sandy spot, I plop down on my butt and sit. She cracks a soft, toothless smile and sits down next to me. "So tell me about it." I turn toward her and lean back against my elbows. She puts her ice cream down between her legs and raise her eyebrows at me. "About your life in Massachusetts. You never really did tell me about it."

"Not much to tell really." She stirs her Italian ice until it's nothing but liquid and tucks a piece of her hair that fell from behind her ear, back behind her ear again. "I told you my husband was the mayor and stuff. And I told you that he was well-liked for everything he did." She keeps stirring but I know that it's only because she doesn't want to look at me. "And when the headlines came out that the reason he was dead was because I was driving drunk…people were mad at me. People hated me. Vandalized my house, flattened my tires, left notes in my mailbox, talked about me, stared, pointed…it just wasn't a good life to live really." She picks up a spoonful of the liquid and slurps it. "And that's all there is to it."

"Can I ask you a question?" I take the spoon off of her and gather up some cherry liquid for myself. I wanted some of it back when it was still Italian ice but I guess I can settle for some juice. I'm thirsty anyway. She shrugs her shoulders and cups her hand underneath the spoon so I don't make a mess as I bring it up to my mouth. I suck up the spoonful of juice, swallow it and lick my lips. "Why aren't you in jail, Jo? If it was really your fault…why aren't you in jail? Why don't you have a DUI? A murder charge?"

"I was going to be." She looks down at the sand and doodles her name in her picture-perfect handwriting. "In jail, I mean. I was going to go to jail. But I had a lawyer and basically, he got Mark's defense to drop charges because I was battling a broken pelvis and stuff. I was just ordered to pay the restitution, which is why my house went up for foreclosure. His parents and his defense attorney agreed to dismiss all the charges as long as I could pay back like three million dollars or something like that. I couldn't do it so they took everything but the house away to compensate as payback. I barely escaped jail time. And I have a record. Not a murder charge because that was dismissed but I have a reckless endangerment charge and a DWI." She rubs her lips together and smears sand over top of her name to erase it. "I used to wish they had sent me to jail though. Jail would've been better than having to walk around a town where people hated me…and I deserved to pay for what I did."

"You already paid enough." I lick my lips again and twiddle my thumbs for a moment as I think whether I should do this or not. She's not really much for PDA but I grab her hand anyway. "I'm glad you didn't have to go to jail though…" I have to admit that I was expecting a better reason than that. Ever since she told me that she was drunk driving and caused the accident, I've been wondering why exactly she wasn't sent to jail. I finally got up enough nerve to ask her and well, it was anticlimactic. I thought that she was going to say something like they found out that the car's breaks were faulty or something like that, anything that would've suggested that like her mom said, she's just being too hard on herself. I didn't really think that it was seriously going to be her fault. "I wouldn't have met you if you had gone to jail." I stroke her knuckles with my thumb and she squeezes her fingers around my hand to accept my hand hold. "Promise me something?" With that half-smile still on her face, she turns her head toward me and raises one eyebrow. "After today…no more talking about the accident." I'm her boyfriend now and I'm going to assume the responsibility for making sure that she's happy. And she's always unhappy when it comes to talking about the accident so we're nipping that in the bud. I don't want to see Jo unhappy anymore, at least not while she's with me.

"…I guess I can promise you that." She blushes bright red and squeezes my hand. Like she did the first time we were sitting on the beach and talking, she rests her head on my shoulder but this time, she wraps her arm around my waist and her fingertips are rubbing against my lower back. If I could, I would capture this moment and stay like this for the rest of the day. With her laying on my shoulder, rubbing my back and with me looking out into the ocean and enjoying the solitude. I never get this alone time with Jo. It's really nice when it's just me and her. She turns her head just slightly and presses her lips to my bicep. "As much as I like sitting here alone with you…don't you think we should get back to my mom and Lyla?"

"…Nah. I think they're both fine without us for a little while longer." I rest my cheek against the top of her head and inhale the scent of her hair. I love the way her hair smells. I don't know what she uses in it, but she makes me want to soak my pillow in whatever it is and just smell it until I fall asleep. Either that or I can chop off a piece of her hair and sniff it from now until the end of time, whichever works better for her. I think that Jo is everything a woman should be. She's ladylike, polite, sweet, caring and clean. I find the fact that she's ladylike to be extremely sexy too. Like when she gave me head, for example. She wiped her mouth, tied her hair up in a bun and made sure that all evidence of her swallowing was completely gone. The fact that she swallowed in itself was a huge turn on but when she wiped her mouth, I was sold. All men want a woman like that. A woman that's freaky and nasty enough to swallow but ladylike enough to wipe her mouth off, fix her hair and act like what she did was perfectly normal. I brush my fingers along her arm and clear my throat. "I really do like your mom though. She's really cool." She sucks her teeth. "Jo, I really don't get it. Why do you hate her so much?"

"I don't hate her." She says that with the nastiest tone, as if she's trying to tell me off. I make a mental note to never accuse her of hating her mother again. "I love her very, very much." Her tone is back to her normal soft spoken one again. "She's my superhero. I don't know where in this word I would be without her and she's the strongest woman I know. I look up to that woman like you wouldn't believe. I love her more than I love anybody in this world…I'd take a bullet for that woman. She just annoys the living shit out of me. She's just so…" She shudders. "I don't even know how else to describe her other than annoying. She just…it's like she enjoys humiliating me. And she's so touchy. She always feels the need to touch me and hug me and hold me and it's sooooo annoying. And she's so like…she's blunt with everything. She overshares way too much and she makes me cringe. It's like she has no damn common sense or awareness for my feelings. I really don't hate my mom I just don't know how to take her sometimes. She burns a hole in my ass and it makes me not want to be around her."

"You should hear the way she talks about you though. I can see where you're coming from when you say that she overshares…she told me everything there is to know about you. But I could tell by the way she talked about you that you're her pride and joy. She loves you like crazy and she thinks you're the greatest thing since sliced bread. She couldn't stop bragging about you. About how smart you are, how independent you are and how strong you are. She loves the hell out of you, Jo. So all she does is touch you, hold you, hug you and call you embarrassing childhood nicknames…at least she's not accusing you of being a child abuser."

"….Touché." She mumbles. "I know she loves me though, I never doubted that. I know for a fact she loves me. Alex, she'd rather be homeless with me than well-off without me." She actually lets me catch a glimpse of her eyes and I can see that they're sparkling a bit with tears but I know that she won't let them fall. "I was six but I remember it like it just happened last year or something." She grins out of nervousness and looks out at the ocean. "We were living in an apartment but we got evicted because she spent most of her time working and didn't have enough time to clean it up all the time. And we seriously had nowhere else to go…so she packed up everything we owned into two little backpacks and walked three miles with me in her arms. And we went to my grandparents' house. She asked them if we could stay there for a little while and they told her that she could stay but I couldn't. They turned us away, Alex. They told her that she could stay, get something to eat, get a bath, warm clothes and live there for as long as she needed to…as long as she didn't have me with her. And she told them to go to hell and she took me with her until we found a homeless shelter." To my surprise, a tear streams down her cheek but she cleans it up just as quickly as it fell. "I know the woman loves me. And I know that I have the best mother in the world. But she really gets on my nerves sometimes and I need someone to understand that." She bites her lip. "Sorry if I bum you out…for hating my amazing mother when you really have a piece of shit for one."

"…I get that." I lift my arm up and put it around her shoulders. "Moms can be overbearing and annoying…and I get that you probably didn't want your boyfriend to know about your embarrassing nicknames and your horrible temper. Your mom's blunt though…I like it. I'm one boyfriend that doesn't mind any of it. I'm one boyfriend that likes hearing about you."

"…She told you about the time I broke my English teacher's nose with a book, didn't she?" Her voice is flat, clearly riddled with annoyance. I just slightly nod my head. "And she told you about the time I snuck out of the house, didn't she?" I nod again. "That's why I can't fucking stand her. That's my business and she doesn't need to go around sharing it." She sighs very hard. "…She probably made me sound like a real nutcase. I swear I'm not though. I just don't like to be pissed off. I know how to control it though. I know how to walk away when I get angry and the book incident really wasn't my fault. He just wouldn't leave me alone even though I told him to." She starts rambling as she's explaining herself to me. It's like she thinks I'm going to be mad at her for having a bad temper. "I was explaining the assignment to this kid and the teacher told me to shut up…he literally told me, "Ms. Wilson, you've been talking a lot in my class. Need I suggest you shut up?" and I asked him who in the hell he was talking to and he told me I needed to simmer down before he kicked me out so I just put my head down because I knew I was gonna end up cussing him out if I didn't. But he came over to me and he started taunting me. He was telling me to pick my head up and stop acting like I'm better than getting yelled at. He called me a slouch and an underachiever and I told him to get the fuck out of my face and he told me to pick my head up or get out but I just kept my head down and ignored him but he kept taunting me and stuff so I just slapped him with my book and got suspended for 10 days. They didn't expel me because I was a gifted student but still." She shrugs. "He should've left me alone."

"You don't have to explain. Neat story…pretty cool that you can say that you smacked a teacher with a book…but you don't have to explain it to me. I don't think you're a nutcase." I chuckle. "Everyone has their breaking point, Jo. Everyone has a certain amount that they can take before they get fed up and I get that. I have a pretty rough temper myself." I admit. "I chased my brother down with an aluminum baseball bat because he peed on me." She starts laughing but I'm being very serious. It sounds funny, yeah. But she has to know that she's not the only one with an explosive temper and a bad attitude sometimes. "He did. We were camping when I was 10 and I had to take him to the potty tree because he was still little. And we would always have distance contests…see who could piss the furthest. He got mad because I won and turned and pissed all down my leg." She laughs really hard. "I grabbed the baseball bat that my dad used to poke the firewood and chased him all over the campsite with it. My dad had to tackle me to get it off and my mom had to pick him up to protect him. I was out for blood."

She's still giggling. "So wait…you really have a brother? An actual brother? Same mom, same dad? Or is he just a really close friend?"

"Same mom, same dad. I've got a sister too...Aaron and Amber." I run my hand through my hair. "They don't live around her anymore though."

"Alex, Aaron and Amber. Neat." She smirks. "Oh, speaking of pee…Lyla peed on me again today. When we got out of the water. She peed all down my hip." I just shake my head. She was doing so well with the potty too. She doesn't poop on herself at all anymore. She recognizes when she has to poop and she'll usually tell us when she does so we can help her to the potty and after she goes, she usually screams for me or my dad to come wipe her butt. It's the peeing thing that she's having trouble with. It's hit or miss with that. Sometimes she'll let us know she has to pee, sometimes she'll walk upstairs to the bathroom and go herself or sometimes she'll just go right in her pull-up. She's hit or miss but she's getting the hang of it. "So I had an idea…it's one of those things I want to ask you about first…you can say yes or no." I turn my head so I'm facing her. "I was thinking that maybe you could have like…a reward system maybe. Like if she goes on the potty, she gets like…a piece of candy or something. And if she pees on herself, she gets no candy? I don't know." I can tell that she's a little bit embarrassed and/or nervous to even approach me with her idea. "You could just like…give her an incentive to go on the toilet."

"Like on a chart or something?" I actually think that it's a great idea. She's right. Lyla needs to be motivated to go on the potty. Right now, she's just listening to me, Jo and my dad when we tell her that she has to go on the toilet to be a big girl. She doesn't know why she's doing it, she's only doig it to please me and she's not particularly motivated to do it. She does it when she feels like it because she has no real reason to actually do it. I like Jo's idea. "You could make a chart for her and when she goes, she gets like…a sticker or something and when she gets a certain amount of stickers, I can reward her with something. Like a trip to the beach or to the ice cream parlor. Something like that. I don't want to do candy all the time because she'll just rot her teeth out. But I like the idea of rewarding her. That's good." Her eyebrows are raised and she's smiling. "Why do you look so surprised?" She shows some teeth in her smile and shakes her head. "You shouldn't. It's a good idea. I'd make the chart myself but I have the artistic ability of a turtle, so that's not the best choice. You should make it. You seem pretty artistic. I want to have her potty trained ASAP, so I think that's the best way to go."

"…You should have her potty trained within the next month." She merely whispers and turns her head away. I guess I can understand why she would feel so uncomfortable suggesting different parenting tactics when it comes to Lyla when she's actually not her parent. I get how that can be awkward. But I really wish she wouldn't act so nervous and shy whenever she's suggesting something. I feel like she's just as much a part of Lyla's life as I am and although it's probably gonna be hard for me to take some of her suggestions into account, I'm ready to listen to them. I'm not going into this thinking that it's only a matter of time before Jo and I break up. I'm going into it thinking that we're going to only become more and more serious and if that's the case then eventually, she's going to become like Lyla's parent. I'm ready to listen to whatever she has to suggest. "By the end of August would probably be good." She absentmindedly starts picking at a hangnail on her thumb.

"Why the end of August? Something significant about that?" It's the end of July so by saying the end of August is almost exactly one entire month. I try to file through my brain for a reason as to why the end of August could be significant. I can't come up with anything so I'm beginning to think that maybe her reasoning is just that it should only take about a month for Lyla to be totally potty trained. "Or you just think it should take a month?"

"….Please don't get mad at me." She bites her lip and I purse mine into a hard line. Either she's about to say something stupid that's going to piss me off or she's going to say something that she has no reason to be nervous about. "Just hear me out, okay?" I nod once. "…I was talking to her. And she told me that she's really lonely, Alex. Hearing her say that broke my heart. I mean, think about that. Think about how literally her only human contact is with you, me and your dad. She doesn't have friends. She had one friend and that friend lives like three hours away in Daytona Beach. She's lonesome and I…I'm no psychiatrist, but I think she might be a little bit depressed." I'm following her so far and I'm not mad. I'm trying to see why she would feel the need to ask me not to get mad. Why would any of this make me mad? I already know Lyla needs friends. "I was walking through town with my mom earlier and we passed the YMCA. And they're holding preschool signups next week. I was thinking that maybe you should sign her up. She could meet friends there and she could actually get out of the house for a few hours while you're at work. She's four…she could've started preschool at three years old. And…I'm a teacher. I'm an educator and I know what it's like. I observed a kindergarten class once…that doesn't make me an expert but I know what it's like when kids fall behind. She was able to start preschool last year and if you don't sign her up this year, she's just gonna fall behind. She has to go to kindergarten when she's five, right? She should…maybe be in preschool?" She flinches.

"Preschool?" I raise my brow. I don't really know what to think of that just yet. I'm not offended…not offended by any means. I'm just not sure how I feel. I don't know if Lyla's ready for that. "I don't wanna send her to preschool just because she needs friends, Jo…"

"But that's not the only reason." She interjects. "It's part of the reason yes, but it's not the whole reason. She um…she would be gone from 9:00 to 3:30 every weekday. And she'd be learning things. She's so smart already, Alex. She knows all the animals in the ocean, she could name any animal we pointed to at Disney and she can count to twenty. She went way past ten. She would be learning things while she's there and preparing for kindergarten. And yeah, she could make friends but more importantly, she'd be interacting with children her own age. She would be corrected…with her speech and stuff and I just…I really think it could benefit her if you signed her up. I'm not trying to be pushy or overstep any kind of invisible boundaries but you told me that I could bring up any ideas and you could either accept or reject them and I respect your ability I just thought—"

"Shh." I put my finger to her lips to stop her from rambling so much. I think she does that when she gets nervous and/or scared. She just starts rambling and ranting and it's actually pretty annoying at times when she won't let me get a word in edgewise. She closes her mouth and just looks at me with wide, scared brown eyes. "…When are signups?" I will admit that she had to sell me on it though. When she first mentioned it, I wasn't too keen on sending her. But hearing her tell me that she could interact with kids her own age and learn things and have her speech corrected…it kind of sold me. I don't know if Lyla's ready for preschool and I don't know if I'M ready for her to go to preschool but at the end of the day, I want what's best for my daughter and I really think preschool would benefit her in more ways than the ones that Jo just listed. "You said next week, but what time next week?"

"…Between 12:00 and 2:00 at the YMCA. You need to bring her birth certificate and her shot records." She talks through my finger on her lips and now my finger's all wet from her spit. "Can you move your finger?" I take my finger away from her mouth and sigh. Preschool? That's one step away from her going to kindergarten. One step away from her starting grade school. One step closer to her graduating high school. Preschool…PRESCHOOL. She's still my little two year old that's cutting teeth though. She's still the little girl that wants to be held by daddy isn't she? Preschool… "Thank you." She thanks me for taking my finger away. I run my fingers through my hair and sigh again. Preschool though. I'm gonna have to get her dressed and ready for school every day. I'm gonna have to pack her lunch and if I'm not mistaken, I see the YMCA's preschool bus pass by the house every now and again. She's gonna be able to get on the bus. Preschool? She's still too little for that. "I'm sorry if I was pushy and annoying. I won't do that again. I just felt bad when she said that she was lonely. I don't have a problem with being her best friend…but I shouldn't be. And you shouldn't be either. She should have friends like Chloe."

"…Thanks, Jo." It just pained me to tell her thank you but I owed it to her. I don't appreciate her making me make my baby girl grow up but I owe a lot to Jo. If it wasn't for her, Lyla would still be totally in diapers, sucking on a pacifier and being carried everywhere. She's my voice of reason. It's like…I know that I have to do these things for Lyla's sake. I know she has to grow up and become more independent because she's getting older but I don't want her to. I don't want to see her grow up and I don't want her to feel like she has to grow up. She's still coping with losing her mother and I just wanted her to do that at her own pace. Jo's my voice of reason though because there's no excuse for my four year old to still be in diapers and be so babyish. I owed her a thank you…even though it killed me to give it to her. She doesn't make a spectacle of it either. She graciously nods her head and kisses my bicep once again. I appreciate her not doing the whole "I told you so" thing.

"…I know I keep piling it on, but…" She's whispering again. I don't know how much more I can handle. Before I know it, she's gonna be telling me that it's time to get Lyla a cell phone. I can't handle much more. "…Is it crossing the line if I kiss her? On the cheek or on the forehead, not on the lips." She closes her eyes. "Please just tell me that, Alex."

"What do you think?" I mumble.

"Me?" I nod my head. "…I don't know. I…I really don't know. I guess it could be but…" She sighs. "She kissed me on my cheek today and hugged me after she told me that she drew a picture of herself with a frowny face because she's lonely. I kind of wanted to hold her and kiss her on the cheek to comfort her but I wasn't sure if I could."

"Do you like me, Jo?" I turn my head and look her in the eye. I pinch the bridge of my nose. "Simple yes or no question. Do you like me? And if so, how much?" She remains silent. "I mean like as in…do you like me as your boyfriend? And do you want to keep being my girlfriend? Do you like me?" She nods. "How much?" I watch her mouth the words "a lot" and look away. "Good. Because I like you too. I really like you. And if I keep really liking you, I'm gonna really like you to the point where I start to look at you as a mother figure for my child. And I'm gonna really like you to the point where it just becomes natural for me to think that you know what's best for her. I'm gonna really like you to the point where I trust that you have her best interest at heart. And because I know that this is going to happen, I'm not gonna keep playing mediator with you. I'm not gonna keep telling you 'yes' or 'no'. 'Right' or 'wrong.' I'm not gonna keep doing that. You love my daughter and my daughter loves you. If you wanna kiss her on her cheek, go right on ahead. If you want to take her somewhere, feel free. If she starts acting out and you need to stick her in timeout, FINE. Jo, I DON'T CARE. I have to start trusting you somehow. But you need to let your guard down. It's not like you have to keep asking me permission for things. I trust that you're not gonna physically harm her and I trust that you're a decent enough person to be good to her. But I'm not gonna keep playing the referee. You gotta figure things out on your own. I'm not here to dictate what kind of relationship you can and cannot have with my kid."

"I'm sorry, I just…" She shakes her head. "I'm just sorry. I understand what you're saying and I'll start making my own calls. If it's something I feel uncomfortable with, I'll come to you. But if it's something I can handle, I'll do it myself." She sighs and looks out into the ocean waters again. "Alex? I hope you do get to…really like me to that point."

"I know I will."

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"I really think we should get back to my mom and Lyla now." I brush the sand off my butt and stand in front of him. If I had a penny for every dirty look, dirty stare, eye roll or sourpuss face I've gotten from other women today, I would've been a billionaire in the first hour after I kissed him. I really don't care though. Sure, I wish that people would mind their own business and I really wish they wouldn't look at me like they want to stab me with a pocketknife but I could care less. I really like Alex and I'm enjoying spending time with him and they can kiss my ass if they don't like it. I honestly don't know how I got so lucky though. How could the sexiest man in Millerton have a thing for me? I don't know. But he's mine and everyone can kiss my ass because their stares aren't going to make me break up with him and they're damn sure not going to make me stop kissing him whenever I feel like it. I hold my hand out for him to hold. I'm not sure how Alex feels about PDA but I've been told that I can be too clingy to my boyfriends so I'm trying to keep it at a minimum until I can tell for sure how he feels about it. "Come on."

He locks his fingers inside mine and we start walking back towards the Tiki Bar. "It's a shame that we have to sneak away just to get alone time." He sighs and pulls me just a little bit closer to him. He's right though. It is a shame that we get no alone time together. I just want a few uninterrupted hours with him. I don't even want to do anything dirty, I just want to watch a movie with him or have dinner with him or just spend time in his arms. That's all I want to do and we can't because either his daughter's around, his dad's around, my mom's around or we're both working. And when we do have a free minute like we just did, our time is limited. It's starting to frustrate me, how little alone time we get. "I think the most time we got alone was when you washed your laundry and we weren't even dating then."

"I know." I rest my head against his bicep as we walk. "Maybe when my mom leaves, we'll have more alone time." As we're heading back towards the Tiki Bar, a woman that we walk past stares at me and her jaw drops. I'd be lying if I said the stares don't hurt though. It just reminds me of Chamberlain and I came here to get away from all the memories and they're just flooding back every time I see someone look like they're thinking negatively of me. I've been trying to take it as a compliment though. They're only staring because they're jealous and they're jealous because my boyfriend is the hottest man in town. That's the way to think of it, right? I sigh. Still and yet, I put on a brave face and continue with our conversation. "Isn't it weird how we find enough alone time for me to blow you when we aren't even dating?" He laughs with his mouth closed. "And now that we're actually dating, I can't even find the privacy to kiss you properly."

"We kissed earlier though. Why do you need privacy to kiss me?" He slips his arm around my waist and puts his lips directly to my ear. "If it's because you don't want these people looking at us while we kiss then fuck them. You know they just stare because they want to be you, right? Kiss me whenever you feel like it."

"It's not them that I'm worried about. You're my boyfriend, Alex. I think I deserve the chance to kiss you behind closed doors…just in case our kisses escalate into something deeper." It really does bother me that I can't seem to find the time to be alone with him when that's all I want to do. Literally, ever since we made it official last night, all I've been thinking about is spending a few hours alone with him so we can talk like we just did, kiss freely, hold hands freely, flirt freely and just enjoy each other's company. It's bothering the hell out of me that we can't ever be alone. "I want to be alone with my boyfriend. How are we ever gonna find time to do boyfriend and girlfriend things if we're never alone?"

"I want to be alone with you too." His fingertips gently stroke across the exposed skin on my hip. "Just let me tell Lyla and let your mom go back home first. Once those two things get cleared up, we should be okay. Until then….I have a car that we can do all kinds of boyfriend and girlfriend things in, if you want." He kisses my temple. "And you can always sneak through my window…I can throw rocks at yours." I crack a smile but it's not out of happiness, it's out of the fact that he's being funny. "Seriously though Jo…just wait a little bit. I know you don't want to, but I'm asking you to. I don't want to nail you in the backseat of my car or on the swing of my front porch. I wanna do this right. So just wait a little while longer, okay?" I sigh. I'm glad he's being that much of a gentleman about it. "Okay?" I nod. "Kiss." I turn my head. We peck lips for a few seconds and at last, we walk up the steps to the boardwalk.

I open the door that leads onto the netted patio and as soon as the door opens, I hear Lyla shrieking. I look at Alex and his look is the exact same as mine, panicked. That's for sure Lyla's scream. It's high-pitched and it sounds like she's crying. It takes both me and Alex all but a split second to kick ourselves into gear and we sprint to the table we left her and my mom at. My mom's a responsible adult for the most part and I know that she isn't letting anything happen to Lyla but still. It sounds like she's crying out of pain or something. I hold my chest as I near the table and once I get to where they're sitting, I stop immediately and just stare. Alex and I are both heaving, out of breath and a tad bit irritable at the fact that we ran for no reason. Lyla's screaming, that's for sure. But she's screaming out of laughter, not out of pain. My mom is holding her on her lap and she's pinning her down while she's tickling her. My mom is hysterically laughing and Lyla's little face is all red from screaming and laughing too.

"Help me, daddy!" She reaches her arms out to Alex but immediately pulls them back as more hysterical laughter comes out of her mouth. "No tickle monstuh! No!" She's trying to stop my mom but my mom is merciless when she's playing the part of the tickle monster and I know this first hand. This is bringing back some serious childhood memories. "Save me!" Lyla puts her arms out again but she won't stop laughing long enough to keep her arms out. Eventually, my mom slows down and picks Lyla up. She holds Lyla still on her lap and starts bouncing her knee up and down. Serious, serious childhood memories here. "JoeDoe…your mama…her funny."

"Did you get a visit from the tickle monster?" Alex sits down in the chair across from them and I sit next to him. "Thanks for watching her."

"No problem. We had a blast." My mom smiles and starts brushing Lyla's hair back with her fingers. "You feeling better Josephine?" I nod my head. "That's good." She holds Lyla by her arms and bounces her knee a little harder. That used to be my favorite. Well that, and she used to do this thing she called the "Power Bomb" where she'd lift me up real high and slam me down on the bed. That was my favorite, hands down. But the knee thing was a close second. "You have a sweet little girl, Alex. I adore your daughter."

"Thank you, ma'am." Alex smirks and glances at me for a quick moment before he looks back at my mom and Lyla. "…You do too…and I do too." He mumbles that last part and I roll my eyes.

He's so cheesy sometimes.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Oh, Alex! I was just thinking about you…" As soon as I shut the back door from getting Lyla out of her car seat, Mrs. Jensen springs up from her lawn chair and hurries pretty fast for an old lady. She opens her gate and as if I didn't stop walking to see what she wants, she almost jogs across the street. Lyla's fast asleep on my shoulder and since I'm wearing a tank top, I can feel her drool running down my arm. She normally doesn't drool while she's asleep but the only reason why she never does is because she usually has a pacifier shoved between her lips. She passed out before we even left the parking lot of the beach. I didn't plan on spending all day at the beach but somehow, Jo and her mother just kind of sucked me in. I'm not complaining though. There's no other way I would've rather spent my off day than with the three of them. I shift Lyla's pink sandals to the hand that's underneath her butt to support her weight so I can free up my other hand long enough to grab my house key out of my pocket. Mrs. Jensen is slightly out of breath but she's walking pretty quickly up my driveway. "How've you been lately? How's baby girl been?"

"We've been pretty well…how about yourself?" I know she didn't rush over here like that just to ask me how Lyla and I are doing. She's definitely trying to butter me up for something…I just don't know what.

"Fine, fine. I'm just fine." She brushes a strand of curly grey hair out of her face. "Please tell me the rumors aren't true though…please tell me you've just fallen victim to Millerton's infamous rumor mill." She looks as if she's about to ask me if it's true that I've been sentenced to death.

I raise an eyebrow. "What rumors?"

"…Mr. Watkins heard downtown that you were caught on the beach smooching the waitress girl from down the street." She whispers that as if it's top secret information that she can't risk anybody overhearing. "Now I told him that it wasn't true. I told him you knew better than that. I told him you could do better… I didn't believe it not one bit. I just thought you should know what people are saying about you." I bite my lip and smirk. I told Jo a week was too long. I told her that we were gonna be the talk of the town by the end of the day. We should've bet on that. I could've gotten another an amazing blowjob. Wait no…I would've wanted my prize for winning that bet to be for her to let me go down on her. That would've been the prize. Damn, we should've bet on that. "You needn't be involved in rumors with that girl. I hear she's nothing but trouble. I hear she's got a past and she's nothing but trouble. I don't think you should have baby girl around someone like that. Now I think we should just sweep this little gossip under the rug, yes?"

"I don't really think it's anybody's business who I've been kissing." I say that as politely as possible. At first I thought it was funny but now it's starting to get on my damn nerves. They don't know shit about Jo. They have no right to speak about her. They don't know what kind of person she is and what BALLS they have to say she's nothing but trouble. "Now if you'll excuse me…I have to get her to bed."

* * *

 **A/N:** Just thought I should let you guys know that there is an 80% chance that I won't update tomorrow. I have a family function that's probably gonna last all day.


	36. Places

The newspaper we put down on the carpet to eliminate making a mess crinkles loudly as I crawl on my hands and knees over to the baseboard. I take the smaller paintbrush, dip it in the can of purple paint and bounce it up and down to get excess paint off the bristles. I hum along to the song playing on the radio as I start dragging the paintbrush back and forth along the baseboard. I don't particularly like this song. I think it's stupid and redundant but it's catchy and I've heard it a few times while I was in the car with Lucille going to and from work and now that it's playing on the radio I have in my own house, I can't help but hum it. But I hate the song, I swear I do. Anyway, my entire house is really coming along. Since my mom is still here for another two days, I decided to make use of her and made her help me paint. So far, my bathroom is done, my living room is done and we're finishing up my bedroom right now. She bought me furniture, too. I tried my hardest to resist but my mom is so pushy when it comes to things like that and she literally dragged me to the Rent-A-Center downtown, forced me to pick out a couch and she paid the first three months on it. After the first three months is up, I'm going to have to pay $25 a week until I pay it off. So I have a couch in my living room now, a coffee table that she bought me, a bedroom set that she bought me and she's supposed to be buying me a kitchen table and some chairs.

I honestly don't know where the hell she got all this money from but I know better than to ask. If there's one thing I don't ask my mother about, it's money. All throughout my childhood, she struggled to pay the bills and take care of me but really, all I had to do was ask her for something and somehow, anyhow, she'd make a way to get it for me. If I had a field trip in school that I needed money for, I'd be afraid to ask her because I knew that we were flat broke. But the second I asked her for it, she'd come up with it somehow. She'd pull it out of her ass or whatever and believe me, I never went without anything. Growing up, I didn't want for anything. Granted, my clothes weren't always from the best designers and my cell phone wasn't the most up-to-date one, but I always had clean clothes and luxuries like a cell phone. My mom is seriously a superhero. And I learned at a very young age to never question my mom about money. She's one of those moms that believes that the kids should only ever worry about being a kid and that's exactly what she wanted for me. She didn't want me to worry about where my next meal was coming from; she wanted me to worry about getting good grades and just know that she was going to take care of me. So I _am_ seriously wondering where she got all this money to get me things is coming from but I swear to goodness that I won't ask. That's one argument I want to avoid.

"Josephine, what in the hell do you have me listening to?" She rests her paintbrush in the paint tray and stands up so she can go over and change the radio station. I spit a little bit from laughing so hard at how she just came out of nowhere and said that. It was all quiet between us because neither me nor my mother ever feel the need to break silence whenever we just don't have anything we want to say. It was so quiet and she just comes out of nowhere and asks that question. "I'm serious. What the hell." She doesn't laugh at all because she's speaking in all seriousness. My mom doesn't listen to much music but the stuff that she does listen to is country and oldies. She likes pop music, but only Michael Jackson. She likes rock and roll but only The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. She likes hip-hop but only the old stuff that I'm way too young to even know about. Oh, and she HATES Elvis. She likes some of his songs but she'll only listen to the covers of his songs. She refuses to listen to him sing those songs. I don't know why she hates Elvis so much, she just does. The only stuff she really, truly, genuinely likes is country music and I HATE country but I grew up on the stuff. "I don't know what kind of music this generation makes. Who wants to hear a song about some bitch that better have someone's money? I mean really, Jo." She starts scanning through the radio stations. "And if the bitch wasn't going to give her the money back, why'd she even lend it to her in the first place?"

I put my paintbrush down too and hold my sides from laughing so hard. "I don't know, mom. Maybe she's just being nice though. She's just politely telling her that it would be in her best interest to give her the money." I look up at the ceiling and bite my lip to prevent myself from laughing anymore. Ever since the visit to the beach two days ago, I've been trying to take heed to Alex's words and be more appreciative to the fact that I don't have a piece of shit mother. She's still been on my nerves but I've been actively trying to push through the annoyance when she touches my hair, kisses me and hugs me. I haven't gotten smart with her in a full 24 hours, which is a new record for me. As much as I hate to admit it, when my mom leaves two days from now, it's going to be bittersweet. I won't lie, it's been nice seeing her. I really missed her and seeing her has been really good for me. I'll be sad to see her go. But I'll also be happy and not because she's finally out of my hair, but because I finally don't have to tend to her and I can spend time with my boyfriend. I really don't feel like Alex is my boyfriend at this point. I haven't seen him since the beach thing and it's not because I don't want to, it's because I've been so busy with my mom and he's been busy with work. We have been talking though. We've been texting for the last two days but it's still not the same thing because we literally live like sixty feet away from each other and we haven't laid eyes on each other in two whole days. "If someone owed me money, they'd become a bitch to me too."

"Well yeah…seems like the bitch just better have her money." She smirks, I giggle again and she finally finds a station that's playing Sugarland. "There we go, that's more like it." She sits back down on the newspaper and grabs her paintbrush. I keep staring up at the ceiling with my hands on my stomach. I think I'm going to have to start scheduling more visits with her. I'm going to miss her like hell when she leaves. Maybe…just maybe…Alex and Lyla might like to go to New Jersey. There isn't much to do up there besides go to the Jersey shore and maybe take a boat to New York to go to Coney Island, but that's about it. Maybe sometime next month I'll try to conjure up enough money to go. It shouldn't be that expensive because I won't need to rent out a hotel. I'll just have to pay for the plane tickets. Even if Alex and I aren't dating a month from now, I'm still going to go up by myself. I already miss her and she hasn't even left yet. I think after she leaves, I'll make it a point to talk to her more and stuff like that. "You okay, Moe?" She continues to paint but I can tell by the tone of her voice that she's genuine. "Something bothering you?" I prop myself up on my elbows and shake my head. "Mmmkay." I don't think she believes me, she just knows me. She knows that I'll tell her about it eventually so she doesn't push the issue. "Please don't worry…I'm alright…" She starts singing to herself, which makes me close my eyes. "This time I'm gonna make our dreams come true…" She stops singing and wipes a running drop of paint with her thumb.

"Well I love you more than anything in the world…" I crawl over to her and even though she's busy, I actually feel like cuddling so I lie my head in her lap and finish off the chorus. I swear in another life, my mom was a country singer. Now, she's not the best singer in the world but she surely can carry a tune. She's not the best, but she used to sing me to sleep sometimes back when we lived in that shelter and I thought she was the greatest singer in the entire world. As I got older and we moved out of that damn shelter and into our own house, she used to try and keep up with the tradition but I was older, I wasn't a baby anymore and I thought it was so corny for her to sing to me. She used to try and sing to me while she was cooking dinner, while I was going to sleep and she would try to get me to sing along. I always pretended like I didn't know the lyrics, which disheartened her because like I said, she used to spend hours singing to me and she always thought that I should've picked up on some of the words. I was a bitch, so I kind of liked making her think that her singing had no effect on me and she was just singing to hear herself sing. She never heard me sing country lyrics before, so when I finish off the verse she was just singing, the look and smile on her face is priceless. "Love your baby girl…"

She brushes my hair back away from my forehead and bends down. I close my eyes just as she rests her lips in the middle of my forehead and rubs my cheek. I look away from her just as a smile starts to break across my lips. "…Well remember me in ribbons and curls…I still love you more than anything in the world…" She continues to sing to me and just to appease her, I mouth the last part as she sings it. "Love your baby girl." I turn my head and rest my cheek on her knee. She strokes the back of my neck. "I knew you knew something…there's no way you didn't." She starts messing with my hair and surprisingly, that doesn't bother me at all. I smirk because she found me out. "You just like being mean to me, don't you?" I close my eyes again, still smirking. "What do you want me to make you for dinner tonight?" I shrug my shoulders. She's been cooking for me every day that she's been here. Bacon grilled cheese, stuffed chicken and mashed potatoes, steak and rice…I've been eating so good since she's been here but I don't think it's very fair that she came here and she's been cooking for me nonstop. "I was thinking pork chops?"

I sit up from laying on her lap and lean towards the paint tray again. "I was thinking pizza. You should take a break, mom." I swirl my paintbrush around in the tray of purple paint. "I can order us a pizza." She pauses for a moment but eventually, she nods her answer. She hasn't had pizza in years, I know this for a fact. The last time she had a slice of pizza was when she came down and visited me in Massachusetts when I was still in college. I ordered a pizza to my dorm and she ate it with me. "So…" I swiftly change the subject and start painting again. "You never did get a chance to tell me what exactly you thought about Alex and Lyla…" She really didn't get the chance to tell me about it. As we were walking home from the beach that day, she started telling me about her and Alex's conversation and I got irritated and we got into an argument and she hasn't even brought it up since. I do kind of wonder what she thought about them though. "Did you like them?"

"Oh, so now you're ready to hear what I have to say?" She picks up her paintbrush and takes a jab at me. Usually, I would dish it right back to her with a smartass remark but I decide against it. We're getting ready to talk about Alex and since we're getting ready to talk about Alex, what he said about me not having a piece of shit mother rings in my head and prevents me from talking back to mine. "I like them. The both of them." She lies down on her stomach and paints next to the carpet since her hand is steadier than mine is. "Alex seems like a really nice guy. He's got his head on straight, he's got a good job, he's respectful, he's a gentleman…he seems like a good dad and I could hold a deep conversation with him." She nods her head. "He's better than Mark Warren, I'll tell you that." I roll my eyes. She finds any opportunity to get a dig in at Mark and his parents. Obviously I don't mind it so much when she talks crap on Mark's parents because I hate those bastards too. It just bothers the hell out of me when she trashes Mark. She doesn't like Mark because he never stood up to his parents when it came to me and she believed that if Mark truly loved me, he'd tell his parents to leave me the hell alone and he never did. That's why she doesn't like him. "He's handsome and he's a doctor…you picked a good one this time, baby."

"Mark was a good one too, mom." I try my hardest to remain respectful. "Just because he didn't say anything to his parents doesn't mean he wasn't a good guy. He was a good man, mom. He really was."

"I'm not having this argument with you, Josephine. All I'm going to say is if that man truly loved you, he wouldn't just idly stand by while his parents took every possible opportunity to talk bad about you. He could've been the best guy in the world, Jo. He could've donated everything in his possession to charity and I still wouldn't give a damn. That man was shallow and instead of doing what made YOU happy, he lived to make his folks happy and you know it. If he truly loved you, he would've told you as his wife, to go ahead back to school and become an actuary like you wanted to. Instead, he sided with his parents and agreed that you shouldn't have a more fulfilling career than he did. HE'S the reason you're in this predicament you're in right now because if you had gotten your degree in what you WANTED toyou're your degree in, you'd be making enough money to take care of yourself. You'd never be without a job. No, instead you want to give it all up to be a goddamn TEACHER, Jo. You grew up watching me struggle as a schoolteacher and you decide to do the same thing?! I never wanted that for you! But you listen to him. You listen to him when he says that as a woman, you shouldn't be making more money than he is. Like a dumbass, Jo…you listened to him. Now I don't want to speak bad about the dead but Mark Warren was no kind of man. If he had the balls to stand up to his parents, the balls to support you as his wife in WHATEVER you wanted to do, no matter if you were going to be making millions more or millions less than he makes…if he had the balls to do that? Maybe…JUST MAYBE I would consider liking the man." She takes a deep breath. I look down at the carpet. "I'm not having this argument with you though. I refuse."

"I always thought you were glad I became a teacher though…I wanted to be just like you." I shrug my shoulders.

"Hell no I wasn't happy about that! I know firsthand that teachers are paid like shit. I'm glad you found something that made you even remotely happy in your career but no. I wanted you to do what you wanted to do. I wanted you to become an actuary. I wanted you to be making that six-figure salary. I wanted you to get the HELL out of New Jersey and make something of yourself because you're SO much better than sitting on your ass and grading papers, Josephine. You're so much better than that, baby…and why you let Mark talk you out of that is beyond me." I put my head down again. She rests her hand on my shoulder and squeezes. "I supported you. I came to that wedding, I walked you down that aisle and I held your hand at his funeral because you loved him and as your mother, that was my job to be your rock. But I couldn't stand that man, Jo. And you know deep down that I couldn't stand Mark. You know I couldn't."

I wipe a stray tear away from my cheek and sniff. All throughout my marriage, my mom would always tell me that I "settled". I honestly never knew what the hell she was talking about until now. I always thought she meant that I settled down with Mark and I thought that it was a good thing. But no. I just found out exactly what she meant every time she said that. "But you like Alex, right? You're not just saying that?"

"No, I'm not just saying that. I like Alex a whole lot." She wipes my tears herself. "I like him a lot and I'm rooting for you two. I don't know what's going to happen between the two of you, but I'm rooting that things get serious and you'll let him make you happy again. That's what I'm hoping for. I won't lie to you, I was a little nervous when I saw that his daughter was so old. I was expecting a baby and when I saw that she's a little older, I was a little nervous about that because it could be harder for older children to accept new girlfriends and boyfriends than it is for younger ones to accept it but she seems fine. He's a good guy. I could tell that just from talking to him for a little while that he's a good guy and he was raised right. And his little girl…she's…" She starts shaking her head. "That's a good little girl. She's something else. Beautiful little girl too…but she's smart. She's very bright."

"Yeah, that's my Lyla. She's too smart for her own good sometimes though." I'm really glad to hear that she's not just saying that she likes Alex and Lyla just to make me happy. Much like her, I don't know what's going to happen between me and Alex. I don't know if we're going to be together a week from now, a month from now or a year from now. I don't know if we'll ever get serious to the point where we'll move in with each other or get married. I don't know what's going to happen. But it's a huge weight off my shoulders to know that if something does happen where Alex and I do become more serious than we currently are, my mom likes him. That's a weight off my shoulders. "I adore her though. Part of me is hoping that me and Alex work out just so I can have easier access to seeing her every day." I admit and my mom starts to laugh.

Over on the dresser that we pushed back against the wall once the paint dried, I hear a cell phone buzzing. Part of me is hoping that it's my phone and it's buzzing because Alex is calling me but I know that it's not possible because he just went in to work at 3:00. I raise my neck way up so I can see on top of the dresser and I see that it's my mom's phone that's ringing. "Can you grab that for me, Jo?" I nod and get up. I walk across the newspaper and grab her phone. "Who is it?" I look at the caller ID. "It says…Thomas." She rolls her eyes and holds her hand out for it. I hand it to her, sit back down and resume painting. I don't know who the hell Thomas is but it's not my business. "I told you I was visiting my daughter…what's up?" She greets the person on the other end of the phone and I just tune out, even though she puts the phone on speaker and puts it down on the newspaper so we can keep painting. I want to tune out of the conversation but it's kind of hard to.

"I thought you'd be back by now, Ter." The man on the other end of the phone says. I pretend that I'm not listening but I totally am. "I thought she only lived in Massachusetts."

"No, Tom…I told you she moved to Florida, didn't I?" My mom wipes another running drop of paint off with her thumb. "She moved to Florida and that's where I'm at. I won't be back for another two days. Why, what's up babe?" Babe? I whip my head around fast and look at her with wrinkled brows. She didn't tell me about TOM. Who's TOM?! I mouth to her, "who's Tom?" and she starts smirking. I narrow my eyes at him and she holds her hands up. "I miss you too. I'll be home soon though." She picks up her phone and exits out of the keypad and goes to her photos. "I'm having a nice time down here though…I'll bring you something back, what do you want?" She pulls up a picture and shows me. He's a little old for my liking but he's handsome. He has curly black hair and sparkly blue eyes with lots of scruff and a slight beard. He looks like a real keeper. I give her a thumbs up. "I think you'd like my Jo. Maybe next time I come down here, you'll have to come with me. It's beautiful in Florida."

"I bet it is. Maybe we'll vacation down there this winter. I have a few vacation days left to take back at work, you know." I poke my lip out and nod at my mom as if I'm impressed with her. He has a job, he's handsome…good job mom. Way to go. It's about time she makes time for a man. She was always too busy raising me to worry about getting a man and after my asshole of a father walked out on us, she just didn't trust men too well after that. I'm happy for her. It's about time she finds a man. I turn back around and continue painting to let them have as private a conversation as possible. "You still could've told me you were going to Florida, Teresa. You didn't think you felt the need to tell me that? Especially when you knew I planned on meeting you in Massachusetts? I didn't know you went all the way down there. You should've told me that. Good thing I didn't book my flight yet. I can't believe you didn't think you needed to tell me that."

"I told you she moved to Florida so I just assumed you got that. When I said that I was visiting my daughter, I assumed you would get that I was going to Florida." My mom says back. "Then again, things tend to go over your head at times." She sighs and snickers. "I'll be home in two days."

"What do you mean things go over my head? You need to learn to be more clear, Terri. This is a miscommunication on your part. When I asked you where you were going, you could've said Florida." The man sighs on the other end of the phone. "I don't want to argue, Ter. Let's just let this one go… I don't want to hear your mouth when you realize that I'm right." He mumbles which makes me turn all the way around again. I tried so hard to not listen to this conversation but I couldn't. I look down at the phone resting on the newspaper then back at my mom. She puts her hand up because she knows that if she doesn't stop me, I'll snap out. "Since you can never graciously lose an argument."

"You're not going to ruin this trip for me, Tom. I'm with my daughter right now so when you're ready to talk to me without getting an attitude, call me. Until then, take the moment to chill out so I can enjoy the time with my daughter." My mom just brushes off the fact that he basically just disrespected the hell out of her. "Now I told you I'd bring you something back…what do you want?"

"I don't want a damn thing from you, Teresa. I want you to get your communication issues under control and I would like it if you brought me back a better sense of understanding. It's always your way or no way at all and you never see anyone else's point of view. You act immature, Terri. I get that you had to grow up at a young age and that leaves you with the—"

I grab the phone off the floor and my mom tries to stop me but I snatch away from her. "Don't disrespect my mother, man." I keep the phone on speaker but hold the receiver to my ear so he'll be able to hear me. "This is her daughter and I know we've never met but I'm trying so hard to like you. But don't disrespect my mother. That's one way to get on MY bad side and if you're on my bad side…just don't disrespect my mother. I mean that. Are we on the same page?" I'm nice about it but I let him know that I don't appreciate him calling my mother names.

"Give your mother back the damn phone." He mumbles.

"I don't know who the hell you think you are. Don't cuss at me, don't disrespect my mother and treat her with some freaking courtesy and we won't have problems, okay?"

"That's bold, considering the fact that your mother tells me that you're the one that disrespects her the most!"

"Look asshole, I will fly to New Jersey and kick your ass my damn self. You don't know SHIT about me, how dare you—" My mom snatches the phone off of me and pushes me by my shoulder. "No mom! I'm so serious! He's not going to just sit there and disrespect you and not think that I won't do anything about it! I don't care how far away he is! And he doesn't get to cuss at me either, what the hell? I was nothing but polite to that motherfucker."

"I'll call you later, Tom." My mom says and hangs up.

"Call him later?! No, I'LL call him later! Fuck him, mom." I stand up. "And how the hell does he know anything about me?! How dare you tell him about me! You have that motherfucker thinking he knows shit. He doesn't know shit about me! Fuck him, I'll kick his ass. He doesn't get to disrespect you and then turn around and cuss at me when I was nothing but polite to his bum ass."

"Jo, sit down." She speaks to me through clenched teeth and points at the newspaper like I'm a dog. "That was none of your business and you need to stay in your place. Now that was an argument that I've had with him plenty of times before and I can handle it. You think I'm gonna jump in the middle of you and Alex's arguments all the time? NO. I'm not. So sit your ass down, take a breather and calm down. That wasn't your place to say anything to him. You don't reserve the right to get in MY business, Jo. I'M the parent here. You're the child and I'm the mom. Why do you forget that?" I cross my arms and bite my lip to bear with the fact that I want to pick up her phone, call that asshole back and cuss him out all over again. "And you can sit there and pout, I don't care but you know I'm right. I'm a grown woman and I don't need my daughter jumping in and stepping out of her place. That wasn't your place, Jo. You need to get your shit together because I'm leaving in two days, Jo. TWO days. You need to learn how to control that temper of yours because I'm not going to be around to calm you the hell down." I uncross my arms and open my mouth to say something. "NO!" She puts her hand up. "I don't want to hear anything out of your mouth. You're 29 years old, Jo. Act like it."

"Well I'm not gonna just sit there and let him call you immature. No. I don't care how old you are, you're MY mother. And so what if I disrespect you…I don't want nobody else doing it. I wasn't just gonna sit there and let him talk to you like that, mommy. I don't care how old I am or how old you are, it's not gonna happen. At least not while I'm around."

"I appreciate that, baby. I really do appreciate that but it wasn't your place to jump in my argument. Whatever is said between me and Tom is between me and Tom. Not between me, Tom and Jo. I'm not going to be there to jump in the middle of you and your boyfriend's arguments. Did I ever jump into you and Mark's? No. Because it's not my place just like that wasn't your place. I appreciate you trying to defend me but you don't have to. You need to learn how to stay in your place, Jo." I bite my lip and when she sees me do that, she knows what's coming. "Don't cry about it." She pulls me to her and wraps her arms around me. "Don't cry about it, Moe." She starts wiping my tears away. "You just need to get better with knowing where you stand. You're not a baby anymore, but you're still my baby. You're still a child, Jo…and you need to stay in a child's place when it comes to that. Just like you need to stay in your place when it comes to Alex and his little girl. Learn your place. Learn your place, realize how far you can go without going too far and keep it at bay. That's all you need to do…especially when it comes to Alex's little girl. ESPECIALLY when it comes to her. I don't want to see you get hurt when it comes to that. You need to learn how far you can go and it's not something I can teach you. It's something you have to learn on your own. You hear me?" I nod my head. "Thank you for defending me, but you didn't need to."

"Sorry." I whisper.

"Don't apologize, Moe. Just do better." She rubs my hair. "Now let's finish painting."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I hold the blue box up in front of my face and squint my eyes so I can read the directions better. I really ought to get my eyes checked out. I've always needed glasses, ever since I was a little kid but I don't wear them. I have the prescription for them and everything and they're upstairs on my dresser but I don't look right in them and I always thought I hadn't an issue with seeing so I just never put them on. But as I'm standing here slaving over this hot stove and trying to read the directions on the back of this box of macaroni, I realize that I should probably go get my eyes checked for the first time in years, accept the fact that I need glasses and wear them before I go blind. Sighing, I stick the box on the counter next to me and use my teeth to tear open the packet of cheese sauce that I'm supposed to pour over the noodles. I'm not much of a cook but I think I did okay with the macaroni and the barbecue chicken I just pulled out of the oven. I have to be at work in a little less than two hours and I guess I'll take some of this to eat on my break. Like I said, I'm not a very good cook, but I felt a little bit guilty when I realized that my child hasn't eaten a home cooked meal in about a week. I started to leave my dad to order a pizza but then I thought about how Lyla really shouldn't be eating junk and takeout all the time like that so I dragged my ass off the couch, defrosted a pack of chicken breasts and found a box of macaroni in the pantry.

I grab a black plastic spoon and start stirring the macaroni with it just as I hear the soft patter of her feet entering the kitchen with me. "Daddy?" She calls my name and normally, she doesn't wait for me to answer before she just dives into telling me whatever it is that she needs to tell me. So I just keep my back turned and keep stirring the macaroni. "Daddy? I need you…" She sounds like she's crying so I immediately let go of the spoon and turn around. She's standing in the doorway of the kitchen wearing nothing but a red t-shirt that's discolored at the bottom like she got it wet or something. I was right. She is crying and pretty hard too. I can't for the life of me figure out why she's not wearing a pull-up though. I had one on her and now she's walking around naked.

"What's the matter, Ly?" I rush over to her and pick her up. "What's wrong? Why you crying?" I rest my arm underneath her butt to hold her up and that's when I find that her entire butt is soaking wet. "…Why is your as—butt…" I catch myself before I can say "ass". "Why is your butt wet, Lyla?" I hold her out, away from my body and twist her around. She has a bright red scratch going from the top of her butt crack all the way up to the middle of her back. It's not bleeding but it looks like it's going to bruise over pretty badly. "What did you do?"

"I had to go potty, daddy…" She's crying so hard that her little face is all red and she's slobbering a little bit. "I had to go poo poo and I goed to the potty and my chairy wasn't on there but I can't hold it and I…I falled in…" I have to try not to laugh at that. She literally fell in the toilet. She must've gone on the downstairs toilet because her potty adapter is clamped to the upstairs toilet. Looks like I have to buy another adapter. The entire reason we got the adapter is so that the toilet seat wasn't too big because Lyla's pretty petite for her age. She's really short and skinny and the opening of the adult toilet seat is too big for her so I can see now how she'd fall in and scratch her butt and her back off the back of the seat. I feel so bad but it's actually pretty funny. "My bummy hurts…" She lays down on my shoulder and starts crying even harder.

"Did you go poop though?" She nods her head. "Well I'm proud of you for going poopy on the potty." I carry her back to the bathroom where I find the carnage. My bathroom floor is wet and the toilet seat is soaked. The toilet is way too big for her. She probably really struggled to climb up on the seat and sit down. She was sitting on the couch and watching TV the last time I checked on her and she knows that her potty chair is upstairs on the toilet. She must've really had to poop if she couldn't even make it upstairs to go. "Let me wipe your bum." I grab some toilet paper and put her down. She's still whining and she's standing like her back hurts. I can look at her back and her butt and tell that nothing's broken though. Her hips are aligned, she's able to stand and it's not discolored. She's fine. "Next time you really have to poop, tell me. I'll take you upstairs myself, okay? No more going potty without a potty chair, alright?" She nods her head and sniffles. I wipe her butt and toss the toilet paper in the toilet along with her poop. "Go flush it." She likes flushing the toilet a whole lot, so she excitedly toddles over to it and pushes the button to flush it. I should go turn that macaroni off and give her a bath since she fell into poop infested water. It's a big step that she actually went in the toilet though. I can't wait to tell Jo that she went poop on the potty.

 **X X X**

"You're such a big girl for going poop on the potty." I reach across the tub and continue scrubbing her scalp with the shampoo. "I'm proud of you…" She's washing her Barbie doll's hair. "Lyla?" She stops and looks up at me. "Daddy's proud of you for going poop on the potty without being told." I stop scrubbing her hair. She nods her head and looks back down at her Barbie. I rinse my hands off in the water below and just watch her. For the last two days, she's been kind of down in the dumps. I won't say she's been unhappy, she just hasn't been her usual self. She's been quiet and all she really wants to do is watch TV. She hasn't been her usual, "daddy come play with me" self. I think it's because she hasn't seen Jo in two days. This time though, it's really not either one of our faults. I worked a double yesterday. I worked from 7:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night yesterday because Arizona took a sick day to stay home with her sick toddler. Lyla stayed with my dad all day yesterday and I'm sure Jo was busy with her mom. I work at 3:00 today and I won't get off until 11:00 and again, Jo's busy with her mom. We've just been too busy to see each other and I feel bad but that's the way it is.

Some relationship, right? I haven't seen my girlfriend in two days. I won't lie; I miss her like hell but I know that it's not like we've been avoiding each other and that helps to know that we're still together even though it's been a few days since we've seen each other. I'm hoping that when Jo's mom leaves, maybe things will calm down with our schedules enough for me to see her every day like I want to. Jo works and I work too but I think when her mom leaves, we'll be able to figure stuff out. She can stay the night some nights. On the nights that I don't get off until 11:00, she can come over, put Lyla to bed and stay over that way we can see each other. I don't really know how this is going to work out, all I know is that once her mom leaves, I WILL see my girlfriend every day. Even though it's been two days since we've seen each other, it hasn't been two days since we've talked. I talked to her yesterday during my lunch break and we've been texting off and on the entire time. I was texting her earlier but she had to go because she and her mom were at the store. It's just frustrating to know that she lives right up the street and we've been too busy to see each other.

I told my dad that we're official. I told him yesterday when I was picking Lyla up from his house. I didn't plan on telling him, but I left my phone in his house and I was already in the car strapping Lyla in her seat and I asked him to bring it out to me. He saw a text message from Jo that said "I miss you so much" with a heart and a frowny face and he questioned it so I just told him. He was over the moon about it. He gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and he just wouldn't stop smiling about it. There's only one person left to tell, really. One person…and that one person is the scariest person to tell. I look at her. She's dunking her doll's head under the water to rinse it and she looks like she's having a pretty good time. I don't know how to tell her. I've ran over a bunch of scenarios in my head and none of them seem plausible. I just don't know how to tell her. But I have to. If I want Jo to be able to spend the night here at some point, Lyla's gonna have to know. I just don't know how to tell her though. I'm so nervous to. "Hey Ly…" She stops with the doll and looks at me again. "You know who else is gonna be proud of you for pooping on the potty?" She just keeps looking at me. "Jojo. She's gonna be so proud and I'm gonna tell her. I'm gonna tell her that you went poop in the potty and she's gonna be so proud." She finally cracks a smile. "Yep. Jojo's gonna be so proud of you."

"Her gonna gimme hugs." She's smiling just at the thought of Jo. Maybe she won't be too angry when I tell her. Who knows? Maybe she'll even be happy. "I miss JoeDoe. Her…her tell me her gonna bring me my candy if I go pee pee and poo poo on the potty. You call her and tell her bring me my candy dada. And you tell her that I miss her and her gotta come see me." She puts her hand on the edge of the tub and stands up. "I see her soon dada? When her stop being busy?"

"Yeah, you can see her when she stops being busy." I pick up the cup I use to rinse the shampoo out of her hair. "…You're gonna be seeing a lot of Jojo." I scoop up some water in the cup and wait for her to tilt her head back. "So Ly…" I rinse her hair out. "What if daddy got a girlfriend? Would that make you mad?" She nods her head. "It would?" She nods again. "Because you know what boyfriends and girlfriends do, right?" All I get is a nod out of her. "What do they do?"

"Thems kissin…and holdin' hands…" She pokes her lip out. "And thems huggin'. Like Wapunzel and Finn Wyder."

"Boyfriends and girlfriends are exactly like Rapunzel and Flynn Ryder." I grab a towel off the rack to wrap around her. "So you wouldn't want daddy to have a girlfriend? You wouldn't want daddy to be like Flynn Ryder and his girlfriend like Rapunzel?" I wrap the towel around her and lift her out. "Because you know if daddy eventually finds a good girlfriend, she could be your mommy eventually. Only if daddy likes her a lot and only if you like her a lot." I pick her up and carry her to my bedroom. "You have to like daddy's girlfriend a whole lot though for me to even make her your mommy."

"No. You no get a geerfend cause if you do, you forget about me. And I no fink JoeDoe will like a geerfend either. So no geerfend." She shakes her head.

"Well…what if Jojo was my girlfriend? Would you like that?" I start by drying off her hair. "What if I kissed and hugged and held Jojo's hand? And Jojo would be like Rapunzel and I'd be like Flynn Ryder."

She giggles. "JoeDoe look like Wapunzel when her cut her hair too dada. JoeDoe's hair brown and short like Wapunzel…but you no look like Finn Wyder."

"I guess I don't look like Flynn Ryder." I start drying her body. "But would you be okay if Jojo was my girlfriend?" She nods her head. "You would?!" She nods again. "Why?"

"Um…'acause I like JoeDoe. Her nice and her fun and her can be my mommy." She stands up on my bed and waits for me to bring her a pull-up. "If her your geerfend I see her every day and I want her to be here every day. I like JoeDoe. And I fink…" She looks down at the bed she's standing on. "I fink…" For some reason, she starts to whisper. "Pappy telled me about angels yesterday, dada." I sit down on the bed and listen to her. "I fink mommy sended JoeDoe to us 'acause her know we need a mommy 'round here. Mommy gibb JoeDoe to us to make us feel bedder."

My daughter is way too smart to be a four year old. There's no way she came up with that on her own. My dad probably helped her out by telling her about angels but I know for a fact that Lyla came up with the whole "Jenna sent Jo to us" on her own. My dad told me that they had a talk about angels yesterday. He told her that sometimes angels live up in the sky and watch over us and send us things that'll make us feel better. That little piece of information gave Lyla all the ammunition she needed and she came up with that on her own. Because that's just what Lyla does. Her imagination is wild and in order to cope with things, she makes up things so that they make sense in her head and she's so smart. It's comforting for her to think of it that way so I'm just gonna let her think of it that way. That's a pretty neat theory though, isn't it? "Yeah, Ly…maybe mommy did send Jojo to us to make us feel better." I grab a pull-up. "So you think Jojo being daddy's girlfriend is a good idea? You want Jojo to be daddy's girlfriend?"

"Yeah." She nods her head. "And then you can marry her and her be my mommy 'acause JoeDoe will be a weal good mama."

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Ly. I don't know about getting married to her."

 **X X X**

"Dr. Robbins and I will be in the room to monitor baby Jack's vitals while Dr. Grey mobilizes the spleen…and Dr. Torres will clear out all the bone fragments and she'll reconstruct the ribcage. The entire surgery should last about 6 or 7 hours. But your baby boy should be back to his normal self within no time." I finish explaining the procedure for the third time in a row and I'm in need of some water. This little boy's parents have asked me to run through the procedure three times so they can understand it as best as they possibly can. Their three year old was going down the slide at a waterpark and he got scared and he started to walk down the slide. Before the parents could get to him, he fell over the side and hit the ground pretty hard and he broke three of his ribs and a bone fragment punctured his spleen. He's gonna be alright but he's pretty banged up. They were investigated by CPS and they're cleared and their kid is going to be fine. "He's got a whole team of excellent surgeons on his side. He should make a speedy recovery." I put his chart away. "Now any questions, you can direct them to Dr. Grey or Dr. Torres. I have to get Jack's labs so he can be in surgery within the next hour."

"Thank you, Dr. Karev." The tearful mother thanks me and goes right back to stroking her baby boy's hair. He's sedated so he's not in any pain but you would think he's screaming in agony with the way his parents have been babying him.

I turn to Grey and Torres. "I'll be back in about twenty minutes. Page me if his vitals tank." The blonde and the brunette both nod at me and go back to doing their individual pre-op screenings. I've only talked to Torres in passing, but she's Robbins' wife and she's pretty cool. Today's the first time I've ever worked with the blonde named Grey and I must say that she's pretty neat. I like her. I leave out of the kid's room and walk down the hall so I can get to the nurses' station and put this chart back on the charger. Speaking of nurses', I hope Stacy is at the station. I haven't seen her since our date. We haven't been working the same shifts so I haven't seen her and I want to tell her properly that we're over or whatever. I could've just texted her and told her but I thought that might've been rude to end things over a text message so I've just been waiting until I can see her and tell her in person.

"Alex." Nurse Michelle calls me as soon as I approach the station. I stick the chart on the charger and look up at her. "Where's your father? Is he watching Lyla today?" She asks. I still can't look at Michelle the same after hearing her scream my father's name during climax back at Disney World. It's just awkward because every time she says something to me, all I hear is her screaming "JIMMY!" in between the banging of the headboard and it's rather disturbing. I nod my head and try to force the thoughts out of my head. "Is he watching her tomorrow?" I shake my head. "Tell him I said to call me when you pick her up tonight. Tell him I need to talk to him about something, okay?" I just nod again.

From the corner of my eye, I see a brunette woman walking up the hallway. "Stacy." I call her name and automatically, I can tell that I'm the last person she wants to talk to just by the look on her face. I start walking towards her. She looks as if she hates me or something. "I've been meaning to talk to you…"

"You don't want to talk to me, Alex." She sounds pissed.

"Yeah, actually I do…" I keep walking towards her.

"No…you really don't."

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"Where are you going, Jo?" My mom holds her third or fourth slice of pizza up to her mouth but pauses before taking a bite to talk to me. We just got done doing everything we needed to do about an hour ago and we're just now getting to eat our dinner. It's 11:45 and thank god that Domino's Pizza is open 24 hours, otherwise me and my mom would be going to bed hungry as hell. We finished painting my room and after that, we went downtown and bought more furniture while we waited for it to dry. We just got done putting my house together. I now have a kitchen table, curtains and blinds hanging up in my windows, rugs, a living room set and a nice bedroom. My house actually looks like a home and I have my mommy to thank for that. We took showers and I finally ordered our dinner. "It's late, you shouldn't be walking around by yourself, baby." She takes a bite of her pizza and crosses her legs on my bed. "Let me come with you."

"No, it's fine mommy…I'm just going out on the porch to meet Alex. I'm not going anywhere. You can keep watching the movie, you don't have to pause it for me." I lick pizza sauce off my lips and climb down off my bed since my air mattress isn't on the floor anymore. It's actually on a bedframe. "I'll be right back." Alex texted me a couple minutes ago and asked me to come out on my porch because he's on his way home from work. He can't stay long because he's coming over here before he picks Lyla up from his dad's house. He said he just wanted to come and talk to me about something. I admit that I'm a little bit nervous as to what he has to talk to me about. I really hope he's not breaking up with me. I adjust my yellow basketball shorts, fix my white t-shirt and slip a pair of flip flops on so I can go outside. I turn my porch light on and open my door.

He's not on the porch yet but I can see him coming up the walkway. I shut my door behind myself and step out onto the porch to wait for him. I haven't laid eyes on him in two days and my heart feels like it's about to burst. Is it bad that I want to cry happy tears because I'm finally seeing my boyfriend after two days? He's walking kind of slow with his hands in his pockets and his head down. I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that he's about to break up with me. I bite my lip to mentally prepare myself just as he starts trudging up the steps that lead to my porch. "…Hey." I greet him with nervousness paralyzing my body and preventing me to hug him like I want to. I don't want him to prolong this though. If he's about to break up with me, I'd rather him just tell me so I can hurry up, go cry in my mother's arms over it and go to bed. "Sorry it's been two days…" I'm about to cry. He won't even pick his head up and look at me so I just know that this is going to be bad. "I've just been really busy with my mom and everything and…" I really wish he'd look at me. I can't even see his face, all I see is the top of his head. "If you want to break up, Alex…"

"I didn't say that." He clears his throat, sighs so hard that his shoulders slouch and slowly lifts his head. "I said I wanted to talk to you…" My jaw drops as soon as he picks his head up. My stomach is in knots, I feel so nauseous and tears are stinging my eyes badly. I feel so nauseous. He has a really nasty bruise underneath his eye and his lip is all busted. "Don't look at me like that, Jo…I know it looks bad." He mumbles.

"What happened?!" I grab his hand and pull him closer to me. I put my hand on his shoulder and push down so he gets the picture that I want him to kneel since he's so much taller than me. He bends his knees and kneels a bit so I can see his face better. His eye is so bruised that it's literally black and it's swollen nearly shut. His lip is swollen too, a little bit of dried blood lining the corner of where it's busted at. "Alex, what happened to you?" I gently cradle his face in my hand and brush my thumb over the swollen part of his eye. I don't know how he drove all the way home from Pensacola with his eye swollen this bad.

"Our relationship…that's what happened to me." He chuckles but I'm not laughing at all. He's trying to make a joke about this but I find nothing funny about any of this. His face looks like shit, how is he trying to be funny?! There's nothing funny about how swollen his eye is and how busted up his lip is. "I just wanted to tell you…before you heard from anywhere else because it seems to be travelling like wildfire." He gets serious once he sees that I'm not laughing. "You've been hearing what people are saying about me and you, right?" I nod my head. We were texting about this yesterday. He told me that he ran into our nosy ass neighbor Mrs. Jensen and she had something to say about me. I don't care though. Everyone always has something negative to say about me, even when I haven't done anything to deserve it. "I just wanted to make sure you're okay with everything…"

"I'm fine, now what happened to you?" I dismiss the rumor thing. I don't care about that. What I care about right now is the fact that my boyfriend's face is bruised. "What happened?"

"…I had to tell Stacy that I didn't want a second date. She already heard that I was on the beach kissing another girl and she was mad that I didn't call her. She waited by the phone for my call and I never did call her back about the date. So she slapped me…I deserved that though. I was a dick. I blatantly ignored her calls. I deserved the slap. But once I told her that the rumors were true…and I was dating someone else…she punched me." My jaw drops again. "Yep…so my black eye came from a chick. But word on the street is that I got in a fight with one of those guys that come down to the hut and flirt with you while you're bartending. Which is a better rumor than the fact that I actually got punched by a chick." He smirks. "But I wanted you to know the truth before you heard the rumor and thought that I'm immature enough to punch a guy that flirts with you at your job. I wanted to clear it up."

"You did not deserve this." I'm trying so hard to keep my anger under control right now because Alex has never seen me when I'm really pissed off and I want to keep it that way. But I'm having a really hard time right now, I'm struggling. Some other woman put her hands on him. How is that okay? How am I supposed to be cool with that? "Girls get broken up with all the time and they don't all lash out and hit the guy. The only reason she punched you is because she KNOWS you weren't going to hit her back. You should've threw her against the wall or something. You let her slap you? And then you stuck around long enough to let her punch you afterwards?! Hell no." I grab his hand and start pulling him towards the kitchen. I'm about to snap out. "Are you serious? She HIT you? Does she not know that your girlfriend is crazy? I don't think she knows that. I don't think she knows that you have a girlfriend that can and WILL beat her ass." I open my door. "I'll fucking…" I blow out a breath of hair to calm myself down. "Oh my god." I bawl my fists up and slap my light switch to turn on my kitchen lights. "Sit down."

"Jo, don't flip." He sits down and holds his head in his hands. "She warned me. She told me that I didn't want to talk to her and I pressed the issue. I thought I was doing the right thing by telling her in person but I wasn't. I thought it would've made me a bigger asshole if I just didn't talk to her again and not let her know what was going on, but…" He sighs. "Don't flip out though. I'm fine. We've only been together for a few days…you don't need to flip out."

"DON'T TELL ME NOT TO FLIP OUT, ALEX." I officially lost it. I was keeping it under control but I lost it. "…Mom, can you bring me a rag out of the bathroom?!" I yell back and I hear my bed rustle so I know she heard me. "She HIT you. What would you do if another man hit me? Would you be calm if I showed up at your doorstep with a bloody lip and a black eye? And told you that another man punched and slapped me? Would you be calm?! I don't give a fuck if we've been dating for three days or three years, you're still MY boyfriend and I'll be damned if I let another bitch put her hands on you. That's BULLSHIT and you know it." My mom shows up in the kitchen with a washcloth in tow. I can tell that she wants to ask me what's going on but after the conversation we had earlier about staying in our places, she turns around and walks away to set an example for me. "I don't even put my hands on you. I WOULDN'T put my hands on you, what the fuck…" I go to my freezer so I can get some ice.

"She's not worth it though, Jo. It's not the first black eye I've gotten and it's fine. She's not worth you getting all worked up over." He sighs again. I stick a few ice cubes in a plastic bag, wrap the washcloth around the plastic bag and walk it over to him. "Promise me you won't go all crazy and try to hunt the girl down? She was suspended from work for a few days and she might get fired, so she was dealt with. I'm off tomorrow so I can have a little while to regroup. I'll be fine."

"That's not my point, Alex." I gently press the ice pack to his eye. "Maybe I won't go crazy and hit the girl but the bitch ought to know that you have a girlfriend and she doesn't appreciate her boyfriend showing up with black eyes. She's not going to be hitting you. She has no right to hit you." He flinches away but I hold his head still. "This is bullshit and you know damn well it's bullshit. I shouldn't have to deal with this and you didn't deserve this." I rub my thumb across the split in his lip. "What are you gonna tell Lyla? She's gonna wonder how her daddy got a black eye."

He shrugs. "I'll find something to say." He holds the ice pack on his eye himself. "Believe it or not, it looked worse than this." I raise my eyebrows and he nods. "This girl I was working with helped me out. Dr. Grey…she helped me out. My other friend got her off and she helped me out. That's the perks of having a lot of people around that like me." He smirks just like my Alex. He has dried blood on his upper lip so I rub it but it's not coming off. He grabs my hand and holds my thumb to my mouth. It takes me a while to realize that he wants me to lick it. I lick my thumb and rub it across his lip and this time, the blood goes away. "Everyone saw it. My friend Arizona stood between us to break it up, Dr. Grey helped me to an exam room so she could wipe the blood off my lip and she put ice on my eye. My dad's girlfriend was about to kick the living shit out of Stacy…you should've seen it." That makes me smile. "I'm well-liked at my job. See? A bunch of people were about to kick her ass for you. You don't have to do anything." I cradle his face again and despite the fact that he has blood on his mouth, I bend down and kiss his lips softly. "Oh, and guess what?"

"What?" I peel the ice pack away from his eye and look at it. It's still pretty swollen but the more I look at it, the more I realize that it doesn't look too bad. I'm just not okay with the fact that she basically took advantage of him. Alex can be an asshole at times but he's generally a very sweet man. That bitch KNEW that he's not the type that would hit her back or even restrain her so she just took two free, cheap shots at him. She knew he wasn't going to do anything back because Alex won't even raise his hand at a woman. I rub his hair and put the ice back on his eye.

"I told Lyla." My jaw drops for the third time tonight. He starts chuckling. "Don't worry about it…she loves the idea of us being together."

I raise my eyebrows. "Really?!"

"Yeah." He smiles and nods. "She said…well, I'm not gonna tell you exactly what she said, but just know that she loves it and she loves you. She loves the idea of us being in a relationship."

"That's awesome." It's such a bittersweet kind of feeling though. I'm glad that Lyla is happy about it because she was our main concern but then again…nobody else is happy about it. The entire town hates me and the idea of Alex being with "waitress girl". I sit down on his lap and put my lips to his cheek. "Too bad nobody else loves the idea." I sigh.

He sighs too.


	37. Stay

"I can't believe the board let her come back." For the first time in a long time, my dad is the one standing at the stove scrambling eggs and fixing pancakes for me and Lyla. Every time he comes over here in the mornings, I'm always the one that ends up slaving over the stove and fixing something for breakfast. Needless to say he shocked the shit out of me when he went over to the fridge and opened up the carton of eggs for once. I grab two coffee mugs out of the cupboard above the microwave and glance over his shoulder to make sure he's preparing the eggs the way I like my eggs prepared. I'm not a very good cook but if there's one thing I'm good at making, it's scrambled eggs. I always put a little bit of milk in my eggs, salt, pepper and just a little bit of onion powder and they always turn out to be delicious. My dad's eggs don't look quite like mine but they look edible so I'll deal. At least I don't have to cook them myself. "Better yet, I can't believe you're not pressing charges." He scrapes the fork along the bottom of the frying pan to scramble the eggs and as I pour the coffee into the two separate mugs, I just listen to him. He's been ranting about this ever since it happened three days ago and quite honestly, I'm tired of hearing about it. "She should be fired and fined…she shouldn't be allowed to come back."

"Dad, relax." I carry the two coffee cups over to the table and put them down. "It's not that serious. I'm fine and I'm over it." He's mad because the board decided to let Stacy come back to work and I opted not to press charges. I agree that it's a little messed up that the board let her come back, but I don't really see the point of pressing charges against her. First of all, she's allowed to come back to work and I would prefer to work in peace than to work with this overwhelming tension surrounding the air since we're going through court because I pressed charges on her. Besides…I'm not a vindictive kind of guy. She hit me, so what. There's such a thing as karma and she'll get what's coming to her eventually. There's no point in trying to get revenge. It just makes a very awkward situation for everyone involved and I'd rather just take the high road. Ultimately, Stacy punching me in the face didn't make me end things with Jo so essentially, I got the last laugh. "I know how to go to work, do my job, ignore people and come home. I'm above the dramatics." I work at 3:00 today, which means I'm going to be working with Stacy and today's her first day back after her three day suspension. I'm just going to keep my head down and ignore her.

"Well despite what you think Alex, you didn't deserve for that woman to hit you like that." My dad is all about respecting women so I can't help but wonder if his reaction would be different had it not been Jo that I ditched Stacy for. My dad has to know that I'm in the wrong. I told Stacy that I would call her. I never did, I ignored her calls and I got with another woman. She has every right to be pissed. I know for a fact that I deserved to be slapped but as far as the punch goes, I'm not so sure I deserved that one. It all happened so fast. First, I told her that I didn't think us dating was going to work out and she slapped me. Then I told her that the rumors she heard were true and that I was seeing someone else and that's when she punched me. I didn't see it coming and I think that's what made it worse. I can usually tell when people are about to raise their hand and hit me but Stacy's hits came out of nowhere. Anyway, I know that my dad knows that I deserved to be hit in some aspect but I think he's being so dismissive and lenient with my discrepancy because it's Jo that I ended it with Stacy for. "I told Michelle to watch out for that woman."

"I'm afraid I can handle things on my own, Pop." I look at the clock, find that it's 11:30 and sigh. There just aren't enough hours in the day. I'm about to have to leave for work shortly and Lyla's not even awake yet. Jo's watching her for me today though. She's working right now but she gets off at 2:00 and she's coming here when she gets off to sit with Lyla while I'm at work. It's been another two days since I've seen her and four days since Lyla's seen her. The last time I saw her was when I came to her house the night Stacy punched me and the last time Lyla saw her was the day on the beach so I think I'm justified in saying that Lyla is in dire need of her own quality Jojo time. I'm in need of my Jojo time too but I presume I'll be getting more Jojo time in these days coming. Miss Terri left last night and the only reason I didn't go down Jo's house at 10:00 last night to enjoy her newfound free time is because Lyla was sleeping. I was going to text her and tell her to walk down my house and see me after she walked her mom to the bus stop but I knew that she had to be at work early this morning and I just figured I could see her today. I can't wait to see her either. I'm going through Jo withdrawal.

I don't want to sound selfish or territorial, but I'm so glad her mom's gone because now I can have her to myself. She's my girlfriend, right? Why wouldn't I want to spend time with her? Her mom's gone, Lyla knows and there aren't any more disruptions so now I'm free to have MY Jo to myself. Is it bad that I don't want to share my time with her? I honestly never knew what people meant when they would say "absence makes the heart grow fonder" but I think I get it now. The fact that my time with her has been so limited over this past week really put a lot of things into perspective for me and I just find that I really miss that woman. "You sure you don't need me to look after her today? I have plans with Michelle but Ly Bug is always welcome to tag along." My dad turns the oven burner off and removes the pan of scrambled eggs from the heat. His shop is closed today for maintenance so he's enjoying his day off at the beach with his lady candy and as much as I know Lyla would like to go to the beach, I don't think she needs to third wheel it with my dad and his girlfriend. Besides, Lyla would be heartbroken if she didn't get to see Jo today after I promised her she would.

"I told you Jo's looking after her, dad." I don't have the heart to tell him that I'm not hungry enough to eat so I just pick up a fork and watch as he scrapes some eggs out of the frying pan and onto my plate. "Jo's perfectly capable of looking after Lyla for a couple hours." I stab some egg with the spear of my fork and just stare at it. I'm honestly not hungry enough to stomach any of this but I force it down my throat anyway. "But don't make plans for Saturday night. I'm off and so is Jo and I think it's time we go out and do something together. So don't make plans. I'm gonna need you to babysit." I was thinking of maybe taking Jo up to Pensacola on Saturday. There's a movie theater up there and a few nice restaurants. We can catch dinner and a movie. I'm not really much of a movie person and I couldn't even tell you what new movies are coming out but I'm not sure what kind of romantic Jo is just yet so I'm going to go the more traditional route of dinner and a movie anyway. I'll let her pick the movie. "I'll pay you."

"You know you don't have to pay me to watch Ly Bug." He sits down in the chair across from me and starts to fork eggs in his mouth too. "How _are_ things with you and Jo? You guys doing alright?" He puts the fork down and folds his hands. He takes every opportunity he possibly can get to question me about me and Jo. I don't tell him much when it comes to me and Jo's relationship. It's not because I don't want him to know or anything like that, it's more so because it's still so new and I don't want to risk anything messing it up. It's too soon to tell, but I think I'm going to eventually have something very special with Jo if we stay together. She's the only woman that ever looked past my looks. Everyone else in this stupid town just sees an attractive man and they drool and ask me out when they don't even really want to get to know me. But Jo didn't look at me like that. She looked past that and gave me, as a person, a chance. And she's the only woman that my daughter has ever taken a liking to, which is important. But most importantly, she's the only woman that ever takes my mind off Jenna. If she's the only woman that can do that, then that tells me that there's going to be something really special between Jo and me eventually. "You don't tell me much of anything anymore, Al."

"That's because there's not much to tell." The most I've told him about me and Jo's relationship is that we're actually in one. I haven't told him about the fact that she gave me head, I haven't told him that we've kissed, I haven't told him that we've slept in the same bed together and on the same couch. The only thing he knows is that we're actually dating. When I think about it, I guess I was telling my dad the truth. There isn't much to tell him about me and Jo, honestly. We don't do anything besides talk and kiss. I don't see her as much as I'd like to and it's not like we do anything together. There really isn't anything to tell. "I haven't seen her in a while. Her mom was in town so she was real busy with that and I've been working nonstop. There really isn't much to tell you about, Pop." He just stares at me from across the table. He thinks I'm concealing something. "What? There's not. I talked to her mom…I like her mom, her mom likes me. That's really the extent of it." I shrug and lifelessly pick up my fork again. I nudge some eggs around on my plate. "We don't ever get to spend time together…either Lyla's around, her mom's around or you're around. We don't get to be alone."

"Alex, if you ever need a moment with her, all you have to do is tell me. I wouldn't mind taking Lyla for a couple hours so you can spend time with your new girlfriend. Don't doom the relationship before it even starts. You know all you have to do is tell me to take her and I will. And it's not like I never offered. I offered to take her to my hotel room for the night back at Disney but you said no." He picks up his coffee cup. "And now you're complaining."

"Well that's because she wasn't my girlfriend in Disney, dad. And besides…" I sigh. "If she had saw that you left a stupid condom under my pillow, she would've thought that the entire reason I sent Lyla with you is so I could screw her…and I don't want to have sex with her." He squints his eyes and tilts his head at me and I immediately know what he's thinking. He's thinking that there's something wrong with me because I don't want to have sex with my girlfriend. I roll my eyes and again, put my fork down and stop messing with the eggs. "Of course I want to have sex with her. I just meant that I don't really want to do it when it still wouldn't mean anything, you know? I don't want to JUST have sex with Jo, I want…" I run my hands through my hair. "I dunno." I shrug once again. "She's just different."

"She's special?" He says that very matter-of-factly, as if he's found the word that I couldn't. He did though. I didn't know what I was trying to say about Jo and I guess the word "special" kind of covers everything I wanted to say about her. "Is she…puppy love kind of special or might be Jenna's replacement kind of special?"

"First of all, there is no 'Jenna's replacement'. I'm never going to replace Jenna in my heart and in Lyla's either. There's always going to be that piece of Jenna that still lingers and even if I do remarry, it's not a replacement. I'm not trying to replace Jenna. I'd never." I set that straight first and foremost. "And yeah…if you're looking of it in terms of that, I guess so. It's more than puppy love dad. There's something really there for her and I don't want to ruin it with things like sex and stuff. It's bad enough that the town is already ragging on her, calling her 'waitress girl' and stuff like that. I'm just trying to be careful…you know I have a history of screwing things up for myself and I really don't want to mess things up with Jo. I think she's my second chance and I want to keep it that way. I want her to continue being my second chance." He's looking at me like he's never been prouder of me, which makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't like it when my dad compliments me or talks highly about me. I hate that. "Do you believe in things like fate?"

"I don't know, Al." He starts stirring his coffee with the spoon in the mug and I can tell by the look on his face that I caught him a little bit off guard with that question. "I guess I believe that there's someone for everyone. I think that sometimes things fall apart so better things can come together. But fate? I don't know…why do you ask?"

"Lyla said something to me…and it's been making me think." I mumble. "You think Jenna was my…soulmate or whatever though, right?"

"I guess." He shrugs his shoulders and sits back in his chair with an inquisitive look on his face. "I don't really know about that. I mean, it's not like you spent years on the dating scene and it's not like you ever tried anything new. How would you know if Jen was your soulmate? You were with her for so long and never tried anything with anyone else…for all you know, you could've had something with a million different other girls but you never gave yourself the chance. I always thought that you and Jenna were too young to know what you wanted but it worked so I didn't really question it. Jen was a great girl and all…but I gotta tell you, I don't really know what you two saw in each other." I wrinkle my brow. He's never expressed this kind of concern to me before. "You two were polar opposites. I know some people say opposites attract but you and Jenna were on totally opposite ends of the spectrum. I honestly didn't think you and Jenna had anything in common. I didn't doubt that you loved her but it seemed kind of…dead, I guess."

"Dead?" I raise my brow. He nods his head. I honestly never knew that my dad felt this way. He and my mom both liked Jenna a whole lot and they were all for it when I decided to marry her. My dad starts to explain what he meant by the "dead" comment, but he doesn't need to so I put my hand up to stop him. He doesn't need to explain what he meant. I know perfectly well what he meant…I just never considered it that way. He's implying that my relationship with Jenna was stale and I gotta admit…there's a small part of me that thinks he might have a point. I'd known Jenna since we were thirteen. She moved to Millerton in the eighth grade and she was my science fair project partner. The teacher assigned our partners and I got paired with her so I was forced to spend two nights a week at her house while we tried to figure out how to generate electricity from a watermelon and a peanut. We became really close friends after the science fair started "dating" a few months after that and we were together ever since we were fourteen. I've had about six other girlfriends, not including Jenna and Jo. Of course, at 14 years old, Jenna and I didn't stay together. All throughout high school, we were off and on. I dated a girl named Kendall once, a girl named Alana, one named Payton, one named Madison, one named Allison and one named Bree. Nothing ever worked out with those girls and nothing ever worked out with the guys Jenna dated after me so we always just ended up back together. What my dad is saying is that I was Jenna for so long, without exploring any other options that I limited myself and eventually got bored. I never actually thought about it that way. I did love my wife. I loved her with every fiber of my being. I hope he's not questioning that though.

"You ever wonder why it was so hard for you to adjust with Lyla for a while there after Jenna passed?" He asks. I chew on the inside of my cheek and look down at the table. "You remember much Ly lashed out in those months? Jen almost had her completely trained, completely weaned off the pacifier, sleeping in her own bed, eating right. You remember that?" I slowly nod my head. "And after Jen went, she needed diapers again, she wanted a pacifier, she has to sleep with you and she wouldn't eat anything but fries and lasagna and soda. That's not normal…and I kind of have the feeling that you know that, don't you?" I say nothing. "You ever sit back and think about that? You ever sit back and think about _why_ you didn't know how to continue to toilet train your daughter, to continue weaning her off the pacifier and all that? You didn't know what to do, Alex…and it's because you were never there." I just stare at a crumb on the table. "You know deep down inside that I'm right. You know deep down inside that Lyla didn't have a snowball's chance in hell with you and that's because you never paid attention. You spent more time at that hospital than you did at home…and you didn't realize how much you loved Jenna until she got sick. Jen was a good girl…a real good girl. Great wife, great mother…but as far as your relationship went? It shouldn't have taken her getting cancer for the two of you to realize that you loved each other." I still say nothing. He reaches across the table and puts his hand on my shoulder. "You can love someone as the mother of your child and not love them romantically the same way anymore. And frankly…if you have to wait for someone to get deathly ill before you realize that you love them…the relationship is already over."

I pinch the bridge of my nose and hold back a couple of tears. "…I've gotta get ready for work." I stand up from my seat and start cleaning up my kitchen. It's only 12:00 and he knows that I have to be at work at 3:00 so I start explaining before he can question me and figure out that I'm only kicking him out because I don't want to have this conversation anymore. "I should leave early. I gotta stop and get gas, drop something off at the post office and grab some money out the bank so I'm gonna leave a little earlier today." I pick up the mugs and dump the rest of the coffee down the drain. I don't really have to do any of those things. In truth, I can't leave for work until Jo gets here from her job. But I don't think my dad is thinking enough to put two and two together and he gets up to put his jacket on anyway. Either he's not thinking enough or he gets the idea that I really don't feel like talking right now. Either way, I'm glad he's leaving. "I'll see you later, Pop. I'm gonna run to the bathroom…you know your way out." I pat him on the shoulder as a goodbye and just leave out of the kitchen.

I really didn't need to hear about the kind of shitty parent I am. I already know. I walk through my living room and go straight for the staircase so I can go upstairs and do something I really need to do. Is it bad that everything my dad said is true? Jenna almost had Lyla completely toilet trained and after she died, I didn't know how to keep up with it because I never paid attention to how she was doing it. She almost had Lyla completely weaned off the pacifier but I didn't know how to keep up with it because I never paid attention. I didn't know how to parent my daughter because for the first three years of her life, I wasn't her parent. She didn't listen to me, she lashed out at me and she would scream and cry all the time because to her, I wasn't her father. I was her daddy, sure. But she didn't know what that was. To her, I was just some man that coexisted in the same house as her. I didn't participate in tucking her in, giving her a bath, reading her stories, any of that. I didn't even cook for her while Jenna was alive. To Lyla, I was just a man that lived in her house and would make her get down if she tried to snuggle up next to me on the couch while I was watching the Dolphins play. And my relationship with Jenna wasn't much better. When we were newlyweds it was great but it fell off eventually. We settled into the routine of me going to work and her staying home with Lyla while she taught classes at the community college a few days a week. Every day when I came home from work, dinner was done and waiting for me. I'd kiss Jenna on her cheek, rub Lyla's head, eat, sit on the couch and watch TV until I went to bed. And that was how my everyday life was. It was clear that Jenna and I loved one another but the boredom was apparent. We had an everyday routine and the way things were is how they always were. It wasn't much of a marriage but I was content with it.

When Jenna got sick, everything changed. My relationship with Lyla was still strictly coexistent but my relationship with Jenna changed drastically. I started taking more off days at work, I told her how much I loved her on a daily basis, I started to cook a little more and help out around the house. It took her getting sick on me to realize how much I loved her. I know that's not the way things are supposed to be. I know that you're supposed to love, honor and cherish your wife every second of every day. She shouldn't have to be diagnosed with cancer for you to show her that you love her. And it surely shouldn't take your wife dying for you to realize that you actually love your own kid either. I wanted to ask my dad if he believed in fate. I wanted to know what he thought about the fact that Jo's husband and Jenna died on the same day. I wanted to know if he thought that Jo lost a husband and a child while I lost a wife and a mother is coincidental. I'll ask him some other time though because I'm not quite sure I'm ready for his answer. I don't even know if I believe in fate at this point so the fact that my dad's answer was postponed is alright. All I know is…if things work out between me and Jo, I'll know what not to do in this relationship. It won't take her getting sick for me to realize what she means to me. And if my dad was right…about the things falling apart so better things can come together…then it's pretty clear that Jo's my better thing. And I'll do anything to protect that.

I stand outside my bedroom door, contemplating whether I should open it up or not and do the thing I really need to do right now. If I don't do it now, I might not be able to do it until I get home from work later and by then, it'll be too late in the night. But if I do it right now, I could potentially make things really hard for the rest of the night. I guess that's a risk I'm willing to take, because I really need to do this. I push my door open enough for me to get through and saunter to my bed. She's laying on her back, drowning in a sea of blankets with her head sinking down deep into a pillow. Her eyes are still peacefully closed and her mouth is open just slightly and her hair is still in the ponytail I stuck it in last night, but it's strewn all over her head and falling out. If I do this now, I might end up making her cranky, which would make it extremely hard for Jo to deal with her tonight. But if I don't do it now, I won't be able to do it until I get off work and by then, it'll be way too late…and I really need this. I pull the blankets off of her and nestle my hands underneath her armpits. "Ly…" I whisper her name and pick her up. She's still out cold. "Wake up, Ly…" I put my lips to her cheek. "Wake up for daddy."

She sighs and turns her head to the side just a little and whines. "Dada…" She calls my name, still hazy and groggy with sleep. I lean against the pillows propped against my headboard, kick my feet up on the bed and hold her against my chest as she settles her face into the crook of my neck to fall back asleep. Maybe I won't wake her up. The only thing I needed to do was hold her, really…so maybe I won't wake her up. I wrap my arms around her tiny little torso and rest my cheek against her head.

"I'm sorry, Ly." I rub her back in a circle as she still leisurely sleeps on my chest like there's nowhere else that's a more comfortable place for her to be. "For everything…daddy's sorry." I stroke her hair. "Mostly for being such a bad daddy, but for everything else too. Sorry you had to lose mommy and sorry you got stuck with me as your dad. But I swear to you…I'm going to be the best dad in the world from today on. I know it was rough for a few months there…and it's still a little rough, but I'm gonna fix it. I'm gonna talk to you more, hold you more, get to know you better. I'm gonna be everything that mommy was, okay? Because I love you. You…you probably didn't think so. Especially when I'd come home and sit on the couch and tell you to get down when you wanted to lay on me. And probably with the way I didn't really kiss you when I came home…and I didn't read to you or anything but I do love you. Daddy doesn't know the first thing about all of this, but if you hang in there…I'm getting there. And I'm sorry for the way things were when mommy was alive. I wasn't the best dad but I'm gonna be…" I kiss her forehead. "I don't know where I would be without you. It probably sounds funny, but you're my rock. I know I should be yours. I should be the one keeping you sane but it's the other way around. You're the only thing that's kept me going. And I'm sorry if I let you down but I swear that ends today." I kiss her cheek again. "I'm gonna let you sleep now, but...I just needed to tell you that."

I reluctantly put her back down on the bed. I really should start getting ready for work.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"Hey Jo." As soon as I hear Lucille's voice, I spring up and start untying my apron from around my waist. I don't mean to seem rude or overanxious to get out of here, but I'm going to be late if I don't leave soon. She was supposed to be here to relieve me at 1:45. It's 1:50. She's five minutes late and I know that probably doesn't seem like a big deal but I have somewhere else I need to be. I even gave up my break so I can leave early today and she's late getting here. I really have to leave ASAP. "It's nice to have you back. You have fun with your mom?" She opens the gate and comes back behind the bar. I toss my apron underneath the bar and grab my charge tips off Bethany's box. I nod my answer to Lucille because I literally don't have time to talk right now. I have to leave right now before I make Alex late for work. He can't leave until I get there to watch Lyla and he has to drive to Pensacola, which is still half an hour away, not accounting for the traffic. "In a rush?" She grabs her drawer from underneath the bar and starts setting up to take over bartending for me.

"I have to go." I squat down so I can grab my keys and my purse from the slot underneath the bar where I keep it. "I have to be at Alex's by 2:00 so he can leave for work. He can't leave until I get there because I'm watching Lyla. So yeah, I'm in a rush and yeah, I had a nice time with my mother. She annoyed the hell out of me but I miss her so much and can't wait for her to come back." I ramble, just spitting things out that I think she'd want to hear. When I came into work today, everyone already heard the rumor going around town that I made out with Alex on the beach. So since everyone knows, I'm way past hiding it from them and I've been quite open with all my coworkers about my relationship with him. I'm not so secretive anymore, that's why I don't mind them knowing that I'm heading to Alex's house when I leave here. I wouldn't dare tell a soul about this, but I really wish my mom were still here. Just for today, at least. She left yesterday evening and I didn't miss her until I got to work today. Let's just say that work was bad today, to say the least. For starters, I've overheard about 10 of my customers talking about me and they call me "waitress girl". Someone even flat out asked me if my name was Jo and if I was the one dating Alex. I didn't tell them anything though. I just shrugged my shoulders and since they weren't my customers, I didn't have to interact with them anymore. However, my nametag ended up popping out from behind the collar of my shirt where I usually tuck it, and she and her girlfriend saw that yeah, my name is Jo. I was waiting the table right next to theirs and I heard them talking about me again. I had a tray of beer in my hands and when I turned around, I stumbled and I spilled beer all over myself. I don't really have proof, but I think they might've tripped me. I've been working here for two months and I've never stumbled with a tray in my hands and I'm not typically a clumsy person. I felt a little rut in the floor when I stumbled and I'm pretty sure that one of those girls tripped me but I'm not 100% certain so I didn't do anything about it. I can deal with the rumors and being harassed and stuff. Millerton is still better than the crap I had to put up with back in Chamberlain.

Anyway, I just really want my mother. I didn't cry over anything said to me and in all honesty, I probably won't ever cry over the things that jealous people say. But I could use one of my mother's hugs right now after such a long, shitty day. "Oh yeah…I heard about you and your boy candy smooching it out on the beach." Lucille teases. While I'm still squatting down to find my keys, I roll my eyes. Of course she heard, I'm not surprised. I finally find my keys, stand up and prepare to leave. "Congrats on the man though, girl. He's a good one." She winks at me. I crack a half-smile, nod as a form of goodbye and head out the door. I run down the front steps of the restaurant and head towards the parking lot. I go over to the black 2015 Chevrolet Sonic that now belongs to me and unlock the door. This car is without a doubt the nicest thing I've ever owned in my entire life. It's brand new and it had two miles on it when I drove off the lot with it. If it wasn't for my mother, I wouldn't have it. I reluctantly agreed to get on the bus and go to the dealership with her but that's when I thought she was only going to HELP me pay for a cheap jalopy that was rundown. I thought we were going to put our money together and she was going to HELP me pay for a cheap car. I didn't know she was taking me to an actual dealership to meet with an actual dealer to get me a brand new car.

I wasn't expecting to drive off the lot with anything. I was expecting that we were going to have to go to someone that was selling a car on their own. With the foreclosure of the house back in Chamberlain on my credit report, my credit score is in the tanks so I didn't think anyone would finance me for a car. We sat down and talked to this dealer named Ray and the only thing he could finance me for was a 2015 Ford Focus or a 2015 Chevy Sonic, with a cosigner. We test drove both the cars and I liked the Sonic better so that's what we went with. My mom put a thousand dollar down payment on the car for me and she cosigned on the loan. My payments are $306 a month but I think I'll be able to swing it. I make pretty decent money waitressing and bartending. I should be able to make it. It's a little more expensive than I would like for it to be, but at least I have a car and I'll pick up extra shifts if I need to. I pull out of the parking lot and turn on my signal so I can make the left turn that'll take me to Pembroke Drive.

I found out that my mom has all this extra money from her boyfriend, Tom…the one I cussed out. He didn't give her the money so it's not like he's her sugar daddy or anything like that. He's a tax attorney up in New Jersey so he makes decent money. They live together now and since my mom's not paying all the bills on her own anymore, she has extra money to do things with. That's how she was able to buy me furniture, a car, everything. She saved up a little bit from her paychecks because she knew that she was coming here and she had enough to get me the rest of the things I need to live comfortably here in Florida. I feel kind of lousy though. My mom helped me get a car, a couch, a bedroom set and a kitchen table and all I gave her was a snow globe from Disney World. You would've thought I gave her the world when I handed it to her though. She was so intrigued by it and she thought it was the best thing in the world. She gave me the biggest hug and she wouldn't stop pushing the button that made it light up and make noise. I'm gonna miss her. Not sharing the same bed with her, not sharing the same bathroom with her and definitely not arguing with her. But I'm gonna miss having her around…and maybe I'll even miss a little bit of her kisses and cuddles.

 **X X X**

I jog up the steps to his porch, swing open the screen door and knock on the wooden part. I texted him and told him that I was on my way because I didn't want him to think I'd forgotten about watching her and when he texted me back, he told me to just come in because the door's open. Still, I don't feel right just walking in his house so I at least knock first. I twist the knob and open the door. I kick my shoes off on the rug and shut the door behind myself. "AAAALEX." I scream his name to let him know I'm here. I look around the kitchen. It's relatively clean, except for the fact that there's a sink full of dishes. It doesn't look like he made her anything for dinner so I guess I'll have to take care of that. I walk into the living room and find that there's a sippy cup on the table, a bag of cheddar goldfish on the sofa and Bubble Guppies is playing on TV. "A—" I start to yell his name again but before I can, the sound of footsteps on the stairs prompts me to stop. They're not his footsteps though. They're entirely too light to be his footsteps.

"JoeDoe! JoeDoe, JoeDoe, JoeDoe!" She rounds the corner to come off the steps and starts sprinting towards me. "YOU BACK! YOU BACK!" I can't help but smile at that face. She's so happy to see me. I don't think anybody's ever been this happy to see me in my life. I kneel down on the ground and hold my arms out and sure enough, she jumps right into them. "JoeDoe!"

"Hey!" I wrap my arms around her and hold her up as she wraps her legs around my waist to be sturdier. I keep my arms underneath her butt and look down at her as she looks up at me. She's smiling and showing off her crooked little teeth and her beautiful green eyes are all lit up with excitement. "Oh, my baby…I missed you." I spin around with her in my arms just to make her laugh and I'm successful. She giggles and continues to smile at me like I'm the greatest thing in the world to her. It feels so good to have someone stare at me like that. "Did you miss me?" She nods and says "uh huh". I take one hand away from her butt and stroke her messy hair with it. I haven't seen her since the day we took that trip to the beach but I swear it feels like it's been so much longer than that. "I missed you too, baby. What'd you do while I wasn't here? Were you good?" I shift her onto my hip and start walking towards the steps. "Tell me everything."

"I go poop on the potty. And I falled in but I still good 'acause I goed poop." She starts messing with my ear, which is something she hasn't done in a while. "I falled in and it hurt weal bad."

"You fell in?!" I gasp. "Well at least you actually went, right? I'm so proud of you, being a big girl. You're such a big girl." I hold my hand out. "High five for being a big girl." She slaps my hand with hers. "Alright!" I put her down as soon as we reach the top of the steps and bite my lip to bear with the fact that my hips are aching today for some reason. She starts walking towards Alex's room so I'm assuming that's where he's at. I follow her and go inside the room and just like I thought, he's in here. His back is turned towards me and he's shirtless, rummaging through a drawer in search of a shirt. I sit down on the messy bed and look at him. His back is so sexy. It's so muscular and bulky and ugh…he has a nice gripping back. I'd scratch it. "And here I thought I was gonna be the one to make you late." I reach down and help Lyla climb up on the bed. She crawls over to me and sits down in the middle of my lap and puts her head against my chest. "And you're not even dressed." I start smoothing Lyla's hair away from her forehead.

"Shut it." He turns around with a brown t-shirt in his hand and starts putting it on. With that crooked grin on his face that I love so much, he walks over to the bed and sits down next to us. His hair is all messed up from scraping the shirt over his head so I reach up and fix it for him by stroking it forward. I don't know how he keeps his hair so soft. "How was work?" He asks me, which I just shrug the answer to and keep rubbing his hair. I don't want to lie to him but I also don't want to tell him about what a shitty day I had so I'm just not going to say anything. "Why do you smell like beer?" He puts his hand on my knee. "You have a drink after work today?"

"You know I don't drink." I clear my throat. "No um…customer. Spilled beer all over me. Total accident." I don't exactly lie to him. It's not the truth but it's not a lie either. A customer did spill beer on me, sort of. "I didn't have time to go home and take a quick shower because my relief was like fifteen minutes late." I start messing with Lyla hair again. She's just really content with resting on my chest and I'm content with holding her. "So I'll take care of dinner? The usual…dinner, bath, bed?"

"Yeah." He nods his head and picks Lyla up from me. "Ly, go to your room and clean it up a little bit so you and Jojo can play in there later. Just go put all your Barbies back in your bin, okay?" He puts her down on the floor. She nods her head and like the good little girl she is, she just listens and hurries off to her room. "I can leave you money if you want to order something. There's stuff for you to cook but if you don't feel like it…" He stands up and walks back to his dresser. "Just let me know what you want to do."

"I'll make something. I'll find something for us to eat." I lie down on one of his pillows and look up at the ceiling. This is the first time I've seen him since he came to my house all bruised up two days ago and I really wish he wasn't about to leave out the door. I miss him so much and he's standing right in front of me. He hasn't left yet and I already miss him. I sigh and sit up again. He's looking in his drawer again. "You're gonna be late."

"Don't worry about me." He closes the drawer and walks back to the bed with a red t-shirt in tow. "Put this on." I narrow my eyes. "You smell like booze, put it on." He tosses it to me. I crack a smile, roll my eyes and start taking off my shirt. I notice that he turns around. "So what are you doing Saturday?" He talks to me with his back turned.

"…You can turn around Alex. It's not like I'm naked." I take my beer-smelling t-shirt off and toss it on the floor. He turns around and I can tell he wants to look at me in my bra but he's being respectful and looking down at the ground instead. "…Alex, you can look if you want. I'm not gonna bite you. They're just boobs and it's just a bra." I start putting the shirt on as he picks his head back up. "And I'm not doing anything on Saturday, why?"

"I was thinking dinner, movie maybe?" He flops down on the bed next to me and rests his chin on my knee. "Some alone time…just me and you."

"I'd love that." I lean forward and he knows what I'm aiming for. He lifts his head up and closes his eyes. I close mine too and put my lips against his. Making sure that our lips never part, he sits up straight so he can kiss me better and tilts his head. I rest my hands on his cheeks and caress the scruff on his face from not shaving.

"…Ewww." As soon as we hear that, we pull away from each other so quick it's like our lips caught fire. Both of us look at the doorway and Lyla's standing there with her nose crinkled and her tongue sticking out. "Yuck."

"Yuck?" Alex springs up off the bed and scoops her up. "Yuck?!" He holds her up in the air over his head. "I'll show you yuck!" He swirls her around in the air and slams her down on the bed. She squeals in delight and Alex starts kissing her cheek. "This is yuck!" Lyla's laughing her little heart out and trying to push Alex away but he's persistent and the two of them are just precious. I guess she really is okay with us dating because she saw us kissing and she said nothing but "ew" and "yuck". She didn't pitch a fit, go running away and crying.

She really is okay with it.

 **X X X**

"More pepperoni?" I pull open the plastic bag and hold it out to her. She nods and takes a few pieces of it from the bag. She eats the pieces instead of putting them on the pizza we're making. "Give Jojo a piece." She holds out a piece in her little hand and I lean forward and open my mouth. "Mmm, thank you." I chew it and start sprinkling the oregano on the pizza. I wonder if Alex knows that she likes to cook. She's been really well-behaved while helping me make the pizza and she's actually been helpful. She helped me spread the sauce on the pizza shell, she helped me sprinkle the cheese on it and she tapped out at the pepperoni because she'd rather eat it than put it on the pizza. "I gotta put the pizza in the oven now…it has to cook and get all yummy so we can eat it." I let her keep the bag of pepperoni instead of taking it away. I open the oven, pick up the cookie sheet that we put the pizza on and slip it in the oven. "You like cooking, Lyla?" Her mouth is full of pepperoni so she just nods. "Well you're a good little helper."

"We maybe make cookies later JoeDoe?" She stuffs her hand back into the pepperoni bag. "For daddy?"

"We'll see." I start cleaning up the mess we made. "What do you think about preschool?" I throw away the pizza sauce jar and the cheese bag. "Do you think you're gonna like it?" She shrugs. "I think you'll like it. I think you'll meet lots of friends and you'll learn some cool stuff while you're there. I think you'll really like preschool."

"…What if they no like me?" She tilts her head to the side. "I tell dada no pweschool and him goin' to make me go. Him making me go tomorrow."

"Preschool doesn't actually start tomorrow, baby. Tomorrow's just signups." I lean against the counter so we can continue our conversation. "But I think you'll really like it. It'll be just like going to a big girl school. You can wear pretty clothes, get on the school bus and pack your lunch. You'll be sitting at a table and you'll be writing stuff and coloring and learning things. You're gonna have a teacher and you're gonna have lots of friends there. Preschool is fun. It gets you ready for Kindergarten." I hold my hand out for the pepperoni now. She's had enough. I don't want her to spoil her appetite. She hands me the bag and swings her feet. "You're already so smart. You go to preschool to get smarter. You'll make lots of friends and they'll all love you. Just tell them your name." She pokes her lip out. "If I asked you what your name is, what would you say?"

"…Lyla Bella Kaweb." She scratches her head.

"Good job. Tell me about yourself." I rest my chin in my head. "Tell me stuff about you."

"My name is…my name is Lyla Bella Kaweb, I four years old and I like um…I like puppies and my pet fishy and um…Tayla Swiff."

"There you go!" I pick her up off the counter and kiss her on her cheek. "That wasn't so hard, was it?" She shakes her head. "You're gonna do so good in preschool."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I kick my shoes off at the door and take my jacket off as well. Work went incredibly slow today. Any other day, I'm surprised with how quickly the day flies by but today was so slow and so boring and I kept watching the clock, which didn't help. I think the reason it went by so slow is because I knew that Jo's waiting for me at home. I saw her for half an hour earlier today before I went to work and I spent the entire day just thinking about her. I was wondering what she was doing, how she was holding up…I was just thinking about her and I couldn't wait to get home and see her. I hang my jacket up on the back of one of the chairs and stalk into the living room. It smells like pizza in here but Jo did text me and tell me that she and Lyla made a pizza for dinner so that's obviously where the smell is coming from. The living room is empty and it's dark so I bypass it and start walking up the steps. They might be upstairs playing in Lyla's room still. It's 11:30 at night and Lyla should be sleeping but sometimes she likes to wait up for me so if that's the case, I don't really mind.

Once I get up the stairs, I go to Lyla's room and push open the door. Her pink and purple nightlight is on and projecting star shadows all over the room. Since the light is on, I can see that she's actually sleeping in her bed. I wrinkle my brow and walk closer to see if my eyes are deceiving me. Nope. Lyla's sleeping soundly in her bed with Lionel the stuffed lion resting on the pillow next to her. She's out cold too. Okay, now I'm scared of Jo. She must possess some magical, supernatural powers because she actually GOT Lyla to sleep in her OWN bed. I bend down and kiss my little girl on her forehead before I leave out of her room again. I can't believe she actually got Lyla to sleep in her own bed. She's a wizard or a genie or something because that's nearly impossible. I shut Lyla's door behind myself and go to the bathroom in search of Jo. If she's not downstairs on the couch then she must be in the bathroom. The bathroom door is open though, so I guess not. I turn back around and head for my bedroom.

My bedroom is where she's at. The small lamp next to the desk in the corner of my room is on but that's it. The TV is off, the rest of the lights are off and it's really quiet in here. She's laying in my bed, resting on her side with her eyes closed. She doesn't have blankets over her but she's wearing the same jeans she had on when she came here and the t-shirt I gave her. She must've been tired. I walk over to the bed and hover over her for a second, trying to figure out where I should start. Her face is so relaxed and calm, I don't think she's ever looked more beautiful. Her hair is resting neatly on her shoulders and one of her arms is stuffed up underneath the pillow she's laying on while the other is resting gently at her side. I go down to her feet and start by taking her socks off. I've never really looked at Jo's feet close up without socks on so while she's laying dormant, I take advantage. She has really small feet. They're not very big at all and they're not scary looking like some people's feet. Hers are smooth, not at all cracked and her toenails are neatly painted dark blue. Her toes are small, short and stubby but they're pretty. They're one of the few pairs of feet I wouldn't mind rubbing. The only feet I've ever rubbed are Jenna and Lyla's feet. I'd rub Jo's though. Hers don't scare me.

I move up to her waist so I can unbutton her jeans. I unsnap the button and the two pieces of fabric that were being held together by the button fly apart and expose the top of a pair of fluorescent pink underwear. I wrap my fingers around the waistband of her jeans and start pulling at them. I get them down around her thighs and stop. God, she's perfect. She's literally perfect. You know how most women have flaws? Maybe some cellulite on their thighs, a stretchmark here or there, scars or even pimples? Not Jo. Her body is absolutely flawless—the bottom half of it, at least. She has the same brown beauty marks on her chest and shoulders that she has on her legs. And I want to be respectful, I really do but I have to look between her legs. Even though she's covered with underwear, I can tell she either shaves it or waxes it. She doesn't have any hair around her bikini line and the pink fabric that her underwear are made of is thin and silky. If she had hair, it would be poking out of the fabric and it's not. There's not even a slight discoloration in the fabric that would suggest she has hair either. I knew she was perfect but the fact that she's groomed is just an added bonus, really. I don't particularly care if a woman is shaved or not. It all serves it's purpose, shaved or not shaved. But the fact that she's groomed just lets me know that she's clean enough to keep it maintained and I _do_ think it's sexy to have it shaved.

I snap myself out of gawking at my girlfriend's beautiful body and continue to take off her jeans. Her legs only boast small imperfections and well…I don't think they're imperfections at all. Her scars are sexy, beautiful even. I trace my fingers along them and find that they're just as smooth as her skin is. She came into my life and made me start to question the existence of God but I tell you…if there is a God, I'm thanking him so much right now. For giving me her and for not taking her. Just looking at her scars, I can tell that the car accident was pretty horrific. Thank you God for not taking her and letting her live. I fold her jeans up and put them on the chair at the desk, right along with her socks. Before I turn off the light and crawl into bed with her, I pull the covers back and pick up her legs so I can put her underneath of them.

"Mmm…Alex?" She jolts out of my grasp and sits up really quickly. It's crazy how she just went from being dead asleep to wide awake.

"Shh…just go back to sleep." I start taking off my shirt so I can go to bed too. "It's late, go back to sleep."

"No…I have to…" She's a little bit disoriented but she's conscious. She runs her fingers through her hair and takes a groggy breath. "I gotta go home. I gotta take a shower and I work tomorrow…I didn't mean to…" She yawns. "Fall asleep." She wipes the tears that came out of her eyes with the yawn away. "I put Lyla to bed and I came in here to get my shirt and…your bed is really soft." I chuckle. Her eyes are so big right now, which is saying something because Jo has big eyes as it is. "She ate, we…played a little bit, I gave her a bath and…" She yawns once again.

"Jo, go back to bed." I take off my pants so I'm only in my boxers and walk around to the other side of the bed. "You can sleep here."

"No, I can't…I work tomorrow." She runs her hands through her hair again to formally wake herself up.

"What time?" I ask.

"9:00 to 2:30." She stretches her arms out. "Same shift I was supposed to work today…these morning shifts are kicking my ass."

"I'll wake you up. I'll set my alarm and wake you up. I'll throw your clothes in the washer and stuff. You can sleep here. I want you to stay the night." I climb in the bed and pull the covers back to offer her a side of the bed. "Stay the night."

"…Okay." She smiles and climbs between the sheets with me. I reach over and shut off the light. "But Alex, if you start snoring, I'm kicking your ass off the bed and going home."

"Deal." I turn towards her and fluff up my pillow. "You coming with me to sign Lyla up for preschool tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I'll come. It'll have to be when I get off work though. Aren't signups until 3:00? I thought they were until 2:00 but the poster hanging outside the YMCA says until 3:00, I think." She scoots closer to me. "But yeah, I'm coming."

"Alright." I reach across the short distance and put my arms around her. "Night."

"Kiss." She lifts her head up. I peck her on her lips and she nestles her face in my chest.


	38. Awkward

**A/N:** This chapter is significantly shorter than the other chapters and I sincerely apologize for that. I planned on putting more into this chapter but it's 3:30 in the morning where I live right now and I have a screaming headache so I need to lie down and go to bed. I promise next update will be super kick ass to make up for this shitty one. Sorry guys.

 **M** rated content in this chapter.

* * *

As I'm laying down on his chest, inhaling the scent of his skin, I'm becoming dizzier with drowsiness but there's some kind of internal, biological force that doesn't want me to fall asleep. We haven't said anything to one another in about twenty or so minutes but I don't know for sure if he's asleep or not and I don't want to move my head to check, just in case he is sleeping and I disturb him by moving. His skin smells amazing, so fresh and clean and I have no idea how. He didn't take a shower, he spent all day wearing scrubs and working in a hospital, yet somehow he still smells like he just stepped out of hot, soapy water. I'm beginning to think he just naturally smells good. I close my eyes, move my head to the side just slightly and make sure that my cheek is resting flat against the solid but soft crevice between his arm and his pecks. He has a little bit of hair in the middle of his chest but it's so soft and thin that I hardly notice it's there. This is the most comfortable I think I've ever been while laying in bed at night, yet I still can't fall asleep. Everything is perfect though. I'm on his chest, he has his arms around me, I'm comfortable and covered with pillows. It's not too hot in here, it's perfect by the grace of the air conditioning system and I'm cozy under the covers with him. I don't know why I can't fall asleep. "…Alex?" I'm lonesome though. I know it's not fair of me to wake him up if he was sleeping just so he can talk to me and keep me company while I display insomniac tendencies but I really want him to talk to me. "Alex?" I try one more time. If he doesn't answer this time, I'll leave him alone because that means he's out cold.

"Huh?" He grunts to answer me and he doesn't sound like he was sleeping. Usually if someone's just waking up out of a dead sleep, they sound groggy, disoriented and sometimes even cranky but he sounds like he was doing the same thing as I was; just laying awake and relishing the moments that we're spending in each other's arms. His arms tighten around me and pull me closer towards his body so I loosen up so that it's easier for him to make me come closer to him. To make us closer, I drape my leg across his waist, shift my weight off my front leg to my back leg and wrap my arm around his chest. "I thought you were sleeping." He turns his head and tilts it downward so we can see each other. I tilt my head up and look him in his eyes. "Everything alright?" I nod my head and walk my fingers down his arm so I can find his hand. Once I find his hand, I slip my fingers through the empty spaces between his and lock our hands together. "You sure?" I nod again. Truthfully, I think my problem is that I don't want to go to sleep. I need to go to sleep, otherwise I'll be mean and cranky tomorrow at work but I really don't want to sleep. I want to lay here forever, in his arms, enjoying the time I have with him because I know what's coming. I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning, leave for work and not see him again until I get off. I have limited time with him as it is, why would I waste it sleeping?

I roll over on my side so I can reach him easier, brace myself using my elbow and press my lips to his chest. My lips make that sucking noise when I pull away and I move my head to the side and kiss his shoulder. He takes his hand out of mine, runs it through my hair and stops at my jawline, which he uses to hold me still. I jut my face forward and make our lips meet. He smiles through the kiss for a moment but eventually, he gets into it and kisses me back. God, I could stay here like this forever. I could easily spend the rest of my life right here, unchanging and never moving. In his arms, tasting his lips, feeling his breath against my top lip as we share a kiss. I wonder how far I can take this though. We've never made out with each other. We've kissed numerous times, we've kissed with tongue but we've never made out. I turn my head to the side opposite the way his head is turned and open my mouth up a little bit, just enough to allow him to put his tongue inside. He doesn't force his tongue in my mouth right away though. He's careful about it; gentle and very passionate. His tongue glides into my mouth and immediately meets with mine. It's not a harsh, lustful kiss. It's slow and meaningful, yet enough to make me want to roll over on top of him. He lightly drags his teeth along my tongue every time I slip my tongue out of his mouth and that drives me insane. No other man has ever done that to me during a kiss before so I didn't know how much it turned me on until just now. I begin to pull away just so I can breathe, but he takes my bottom lip between his two lips and sucks on it. I put my hand against his shoulder and push him backwards until he catches on that I want him to lay down. He releases my lip from his custody, pecks me on the lips and lays down like I wanted him to. I swing one leg over his body, straddle him and go right back to kissing.

I can't put into words how I feel right now. I feel as if every nerve in my body is suddenly so alive. Like that spark that Mark took away when he died is officially rekindled, reignited and burning oh so much brighter than I ever could've imagined. It's like every emotion I've ever felt in my life—anger, sadness, regret, remorse, shame, guilt—every single emotion is just wiped clean and replaced with one single feeling; anticipation. My heart is beating fast, my head is spinning and I don't feel like I have a handle on my body. Honestly? It's the most pleasant feeling I've ever encountered. I try pulling away again so I can breathe but this time, it's me that can't bring myself to do so. It's as if he has a magnet in his mouth and I have one in mine, the attraction is so strong and forceful that I'm doing more damage by trying to break the force. I have spit—his spit—all over my mouth and running down from my lips from kissing him so sloppily. He puts his hands on my lower back, pushes against me to brace himself and scoots up with me still on his lap so that he's now propped against his headboard as if he's sitting up. His hands slide up underneath my shirt but don't go any further than my hips. He caresses my back for a moment before he jumps straight into pulling my shirt over my head.

I pull away from him to help him take my shirt off. I toss it on the floor so it's out of the way and start kissing him again. I can tell by the way he's grabbing and touching my body that he's feeling the same overwhelming feelings of anticipation that I'm feeling. It's like a fire burning in the pit of my stomach, causing the warm, tingly sensations rocketing all throughout my body; giving me a feeling that I haven't felt in a very long time…I want him so badly and for the first time in a little less than a year, I'm horny. Our makeout officially turns from soft and meaningful to hot and lustful as his hands make their way to my bra and his fingers begin to fiddle with the buckle. I reach back and help him out but I let the fabric dangle on my arms for a moment before I take it off. I still want him. I want him so much. But the nervousness is starting to set in. I haven't had sex in a really long time and this is going to be the first time I've had sex with Alex and I want this to be perfect and it's already not. I haven't showered, I haven't properly groomed in three days…I have to make this perfect somehow.

He tilts his head to the side and presses his lips to my neck. I roll my eyes up to the ceiling and take a deep breath to bear with the fact that he's making my underwear uncomfortably wet by kissing me there. He opens his mouth up and his tongue prods at the spot directly below my ear and I gasp. I close my eyes tight and rest both my hands on the back of his head. I don't know how the hell he found that spot so fast but he did and that's my sweet spot and I'm going crazy. My head is spinning even faster than before, my heart is racing and the burning sensation in the pit of my stomach has moved to my vagina and god, I just really need him. He closes his lips around my sweet spot and sucks on it, which makes my mouth fall open and just when I think I might moan, nothing comes out. He yanks my bra off, never taking his lips off that spot and his hands start kneading my boobs. His thumbs circle around my nipples for a moment before he squeezes them again. I squeeze a handful of his hair, let go and rub his head. I slide my hands down to the back of his neck and caress it. His tongue is occupying my neck, his hands are occupying my boobs and I think I'm going to explode in a fit of eagerness.

One of his hands leaves my boobs and slides down past my stomach and stops at the rim of my underwear. Without hesitation or warning, he shoves his hand down the front of my panties and his fingers stop at my clit. "Damn…already?" His voice is in a whisper but it's loud because he's right next to my ear and chills shoot up my spine, making me shiver. "Made my job easier…I don't have to get you wet." He presses his lips to the underside of my jaw and teases his fingers along my clit, which makes me close my eyes and bite down hard on my lip. I don't usually talk dirty during sex or scream real loud but he seems like he's into that kind of thing and I want tonight to be perfect so I might just have to swallow my pride and talk dirty to him. I don't want him to think I'm a bore in bed. With quickness, he pulls his hand out of my panties and starts messing with the middle of his boxers, around the buttons of them. I take the moment to kiss his neck. I trace my fingers all over his sexy, solid chest and suck on his neck like he sucked on mine. "Lift up…" He whispers and taps me on my lower back.

I hold onto his shoulders and lift my bottom half like he asked. I guess Alex isn't really a foreplay kind of guy. No fingering, no kissing the boobs, no long makeout session, no kissing of the body…he cuts straight to the chase. I take my hands off his shoulders for a moment so I can take off my underwear but he puts his hand between my legs and simply pulls my underwear to the side. He's not a naked kind of guy either, I guess. He's not bothering to take my clothes completely off and he still has his boxers on too. He holds himself with his hand, keeps my underwear pulled over with the other hand and guides the head of his thick, rock-solid erection inside of me. He lets my underwear go, lets his erection go and places his hands on my waist. I forgot what sex feels like. Holy god, he's big. Oh my god, he feels so good though. I wrap my arms around his neck, burrow my face in the crook of it and rest on the backs of my legs so that he's all the way inside of me. I kiss his neck and start rocking back and forth very slowly. His hands on my waist are pushing and pulling me at a pace far faster than I'm trying to go, so I give up control and let him take over. I guess he's not a slow kind of guy either. "You're so wet…" He mumbles.

He pushes me backward and pulls me forward at a fast yet rhythmic pace and I gasp. Honestly, gasping is really the only thing I do during sex. I'm not a loud kind of person. I'm not a screamer, I'm not a talker and really, I just moan and gasp and breathe hard and give occasional words of encouragement and direction. I don't talk dirty but he's talking dirty and I guess he's into that? "You're so hard…" I cringe when that comes out of my mouth. I could've started out with something better than that. I decide to shut up for the rest of this. I tried dirty talk, I failed at the dirty talk and I'm done with it. I unwrap my arms from around his neck and start rocking back and forth on my own but he won't let me. I'm trying to ride him because that's usually what girls do on top, right? But he won't let me. He won't let me do things on my own so it's like I'm doing something and he's making me do something totally different. I'm bouncing to an extent and he's trying to push and pull and it's horrible and I literally feel him go soft inside of me. He's not hard anymore and I'm really not even wet anymore and this was just the most awkward thing I've ever been part of.

I purse my lips together and slowly ease my way off his lap. My underwear snap back into position once he's out of me and he starts shuffling to put his away. I lay back down on the pillow I was laying on before and keep his blankets over my chest since I'm too embarrassed to get out of the bed and grab my shirt. If I get out of this bed, I'm going home and I don't want to do that so I'll just sleep topless tonight. I turn my back towards him and close my eyes. That was the most awkward sexual encounter ever. I'm so embarrassed. First I screwed up with the dirty talk, then I messed with whatever he was trying to do…I don't know. That just didn't feel right. It felt rushed and forced and just not right. That felt horrible. Not in terms of the sex because the sex actually felt good for the two minutes it went on but the way it happened just felt horrible. It felt like we were two strangers that had never met before, trying to figure out what each other likes to do in bed. It was awkward, uncomfortable and clearly we weren't ready to try out sex. I close my eyes and sigh, ready to give myself to sleep after all. "…Goodnight." I mutter.

He lies down too but he scoots closer to me, wraps his arms around my waist and sighs too. "Night."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I pull open the dryer since the buzzer went off about ten minutes ago. I was busy when the buzzer went off. I came home last night, checked on Lyla and immediately went to bed with Jo. I didn't clean up anything, I didn't put away the food on the counter and I didn't wash the dishes. So when I woke up about an hour ago, I threw her clothes in the washer, washed the dishes, threw away the pizza that sat out all night on the counter and cleaned the cheddar goldfish off my sofa. I grab Jo's jeans and her work shirt out of the dryer and drape them over my arm. Lyla's still fast asleep and so is Jo. I'm the first one up and that's probably because I didn't sleep much last night. I was tired and sleepy when I first laid down and held Jo against my chest but once we started having sex, I wasn't tired anymore and after the sex was over, I just never got tired again. I think I was too humiliated to sleep. Last night was the worst sex I've ever had in my entire life and that in itself is embarrassing. We tried to have sex and it was awful and I'd rather not think about it.

I trudge up the steps with her clothes in tow and open my door. She's still sleeping like a log. She's laying on her stomach with her arms up underneath the pillow. I lay her clothes across the foot of the bed and disappear out of the room. Any other time, I'm excited to see Jo and spend time with her but today is one of those rare days where I would be okay if she slept for the entire day. I don't know how to face her after last night. I go to the bathroom and grab my toothbrush out of the cup where I keep it. I turn on the water and wet my toothbrush. I squirt some toothpaste on it, wet it again and start brushing away. Last night shouldn't have happened. Last night had no business happening whatsoever. Clearly, neither one of us were ready to do that. It's mostly my fault that it turned out that way, I think. We weren't ready for that. We didn't even talk about anything. We haven't had the "past sexual partners" talk and we haven't even flirted properly, yet we were jumping right into sex. We went from giving oral straight to having sex and that's not how it should've been.

Everything I stand for, everything I ever try to be…it all went out the window last night. I'm all about being respectful and treating Jo like she's special. I want things to be genuine and meaningful and I want to make love to her and that's not what I did last night. I just really wanted to please her last night and I just felt like what I did was going to do that and it backfired. I don't know, sometimes I just don't know anything about Jo. I don't know what kind of romantic she is. I don't know if she's into lovemaking, slow, passionate, kissing and sensual sex or if she's into the rough, fast-paced stuff. When we were kissing before all the sex went down, she straddled me and when I tried to keep the kisses passionate and slow, she's the one that went rougher with it. I wanted to lay there and makeout with her for a little while longer but she pushed me back and made me lay down so she could straddle me and that's when I started thinking that she wanted it rough. I didn't want to bore her. I wanted to impress her, show her what I'm made of when it comes to sex. And the way she pushed me and straddled me, it sure seemed like she wasn't into foreplay, kissing and being slow. So I skipped the foreplay, the kissing and went straight to the sex. And I assumed since she was into the rough stuff, she was into the dirty talking too. I don't usually talk dirty in bed but I thought she'd like that. I guess I was wrong.

That's not how I envisioned me and Jo's first time being. I've thought about me and Jo's first time on plenty of occasions and when I pictured it, I didn't picture it being with her on my lap like that. I pictured myself kissing her, every inch of her. I'd kiss all over her body, pleasure her with my mouth for a while, show her that I'm all about making her feel good. And I wanted to make love to her. I didn't want to have sex with her, I wanted to make love. I just lost myself trying to impress her and it ended up being the most awkward thing ever. I haven't had sex in over a year and I couldn't have picked a better person to basically re-lose my virginity to than Jo. I had it all planned out and last night…that wasn't even part of the plan. That was never part of the plan.

I rinse my mouth out with water, rinse off my toothbrush, put it back, shut the water off and leave out of the bathroom. Lyla's still sleeping because her bedroom door is still closed so I have no other choice but to go back to my bedroom. I really hope Jo's still sleeping. I open the door and just my luck, she's stuffing her legs into her jeans. She's pulling her pants up over her pink underwear and I just sigh. She's perfect too. Those long, sexy legs and that silky smooth skin….dammit, I can't believe last night turned out the way it did. If I could rewind…I wouldn't have even had sex with her last night. I wouldn't take it back and try to change the kind of sex we had, I just wouldn't have done it at all. I would've waited until we got to know what each other's strengths and weaknesses in bed are. I would've waited. We weren't ready to take it to that level. I should've just gone down on her like I originally thought to. When she straddled me like that, I thought about just putting her back down on the bed and going down on her. Something was nagging me, telling me in the back of my mind not to do it. It's been over a year since I've had sex and I was horny as hell last night but I could've controlled myself and kept it to eating her out.

Without a word, I just start making the bed. You know how I know that last night was horrible? The fact that I still can't tell you what her body looks like. I didn't get a good look at her boobs and I didn't even have her panties off to see between her legs. I didn't take the time out to look at her body, all I did was shove it in and be done with it. If you're having good, meaningful sex with someone, you should at least be able to give a proper description of her boobs…and I can't. I pull the blankets up on the bed, fluff up the pillows and make sure the quilt is straight. She's just casually putting her socks on. "…You need a ride to work?" I already know that she doesn't. She has a nice ass Chevy Sonic sitting outside that her mom got for her. I already know she has a car and she doesn't need a ride to work, but I ask anyway just because I want to have something to say to her. I don't want to be dead silent and make her think that I think just because the sex was so awful and awkward last night, our relationship is doomed. I don't think that at all. I don't want to break up with her over one bad sexual encounter and I sure hope she doesn't think ending things is necessary either. I think we just need to learn how to talk to each other better, maybe. I don't know. I sit down on the bed and catch the tail end glimpse of her shaking her head. "Are you…" I clear my throat. Talking to her is awkward, no matter how I slice it. "Are you still coming to sign Lyla up for preschool with me later?"

"Mhm." She nods her head and starts running her fingers through her hair to smooth it down. How is she that beautiful when she just woke up? She just rolled out of bed no more than ten or so minutes ago and she looks absolutely gorgeous. Her hair falls perfectly with just a few yanks from her hand, she doesn't have sleep lines on her face, her eyes are crust-free and she looks as if she's been awake for hours. She's beautiful, no way around it. She sits down on the bed too and rubs her face with her hands. "…You okay?" She asks me through a yawn. I nod and drag my feet across the soft carpet. "A-about last night…" She stutters.

"We don't have to talk about it." I stop her before this conversation gets any more awkward than last night's already made things between us.

"I think we should though." She whispers. She coughs just softly and speaks up. "We should talk about it."

"Not now, Jo…some other time…when you're not about to leave for work." I sigh hard.

"I'm not mad…if that's what you're thinking." She stops talking and things are awkward and quiet between us. "Are you mad? At…at me? Because it was kinda my fault…trying to go against you like that…"

"I said we're not gonna talk about it right now, Jo." I mutter under my breath. "But no…I'm not mad at you." I say more clearly. "It was just as much my fault as it was yours." She says nothing back to that. "You're gonna be late for work."

"Right." She stands up. "…Can I have a kiss? Or is that asking for too much?" I smirk but my back is turned to her so she can't see it. Well I'm glad to know that there's no tension between us. Things are awkward, sure and things will probably be awkward until we talk about it and clear the air. But right now, we're taking things slow and at least there's no tension. I get up off the bed and walk over to her.

I put my hand against her waist, pull her close and kiss her on her lips softly with no tongue. "Have a good day at work." I stroke her hair back and stare at her. She's so damn beautiful. I give her one more kiss. She wraps her arms around me tightly and squeezes me in a firm hug. I squeeze her right back, rub her back and let her go. "I'll see you later."

"See ya." She rubs my cheek, smiles at me and turns to leave for work.

"Wait, Jo…" I call to her and she turns around before she can be completely out of my room. She raises her eyebrows to let me know that she's listening. "…Will you stay the night again tonight?" Her eyebrows fall. "Please?"

"…Mhm." She hesitates but eventually agrees.


	39. A Step Forward

**A/N:** I know I said that I was going to make this story shorter than the rest of my stories in an attempt to have it done by the time I go off to college in August, but that's not going to happen. This story's gonna be long as hell too lol.

Some **M** rated language this chapter.

* * *

I rest the pad of my index finger on the sensor and once I hear the familiar beeping noise to let me know that I'm officially clocked out, I lift it up and grab my wallet off the break room table. I pick up the cigarette and the lighter that Macy let me borrow, push the door open with my butt and leave out of the break room to go outside. In the past two weeks, I've smoked more cigarettes than I've smoked in the last year. I've only smoked two, not including the one I'm about to go smoke right now but still, that's a lot for me. Smoking is such a nasty habit and I really should find other ways to relieve stress when I'm stressed out at work but I don't have any other ideas. If I were a teenager again and as stressed out as I am right now, I would've called my friend TJ and bought a dime bag of weed. That's how I used to relieve stress back when I was a little pothead. I used to crawl out of my window, sit on the roof of the apartment building, roll up and smoke out there. When I was done, I'd go back in the house, go to the kitchen, eat a big bowl of cereal and go to bed. I used to smoke so much weed as a teenager it's not even funny. I probably killed so many of my brain cells. Anyway, that's how I started smoking cigarettes. The boys I used to hang out with were usually over 18 and able to buy cigs at the gas station and they would smoke cigs and sometimes cigars after they'd smoke their joint and I just fell into the habit too. I wouldn't touch a cigar though. Those are way too strong for me. I used to smoke Newports but I like Marlboros better.

I leave out of the busy restaurant throughout the back door and walk over to the designated smoking area. It's a slow day because it's a Monday and Mondays are never very busy. Since it's a slow day, I'm the only one breaking right now, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes I like having company on my breaks but most of the time, I like being alone. I'm around people in that damn restaurant all day and my break is usually the only time when I can be alone. I find a suitable, non-dirty spot on the concrete sidewalk and sit down with my back against the brick wall of the building. I pull my knees up to my chest, pick up the cigarette and the lighter and pop it in my mouth. I light it up and take a very long first drag. I rest my head against the building, stare up at the sky and blow out the mouthful of smoke. I can stop smoking anytime I want to. I'm not addicted and I don't sit around craving them. They're just a way to ease my stress level when I'm in over my head and I'm way in over my head today. I take another drag, blow out the smoke and sigh. I swear I'll try to give up smoking completely after today but with the day I've been having at work so far, I'd say a cigarette is much needed.

First of all, this new guy named Brenden was a no call, no show so I have to pick up his section too. It's a slow day. I've only had about ten tables and I only have 90 bucks in my pocket but that's beside my point. My point is that people really should try and call off instead of just not showing up because that pisses me off when I have to pick up their slack. Second of all, I had to wait on the nosy ass neighbor, Mrs. Jensen. She tried to act like all friendly and like she wasn't just talking trash on me to my boyfriend. She asked me how I was doing, how I was liking Florida and in a very roundabout way, she asked me about Alex. She was very straightforward about it but she was also pretty inconspicuous about it as well. She said something like "I see you've become very close friends with our little Alex" or something like that. In an effort to prevent from cussing her out and preserving my job, I just smiled and said "yes, we're very close." And as if that wasn't bizarre enough, I bartended for twenty minutes while Macy went on her break and three different men made sexual comments towards me. One whispered to his buddy that I have DSL, one asked me if I was legal and the other one mumbled that he'd "tap that". There was a fourth guy but he didn't bother me too much because he actually handed me a twenty dollar tip and called me a beautiful young lady, as opposed to hot or sexy.

You ever notice how nobody really notices you until they have a reason to? Like last month while I was bartending, men would call me pretty and stuff but none of them ever really said anything sexual about me. If this were last month, people in this town wouldn't notice me if I were standing on top of a ten story building, letting off fireworks. But now that I'm dating Alex, people in this town would notice me if I was just a fire hydrant on the corner of the sidewalk. My point is that nobody ever notices you until they have a reason to. How is it that I wasn't the least bit desirable to any of the men until I got a boyfriend? How is it that I wasn't the least bit unlikeable until girls got word that I'm dating Alex? I haven't really taken anything that the men have said to me personally though. They're all drunk and impaired and I'd like to think that they'd have the decency to treat me like a lady if they were sober. Anyway, add my list of bizarre occurrences at work today to the fact that I'm still humiliated over what happened between me and Alex last night and you can clearly understand why I needed a cigarette.

I take the last drag of my cig, blow out the smoke and snuff it on the sidewalk beside me. I still have like fifteen minutes left of my break so I'm going to enjoy it by just escaping everything for a while. I stare up and the clouds and inhale the fresh air. I'm really trying to put what happened between me and Alex out of my mind but I can't. I don't retract any of my statements. I'm not mad at him and it was equally as much my fault as it was his. We just…we did not communicate and we totally weren't ready to have sex. To be honest, I could barely look him in his eye this morning. That was so humiliating and embarrassing and just downright degrading. I'm trying so hard to put it out of my thoughts but of course, sex is a big part of a relationship. It's a big part of any relationship. And what if every time we have sex it ends up like that? He literally went soft while he was inside of me. That's never happened to me before. It was so awkward and I wish I could stop replaying the way he was trying to push me while I was trying to rock over and over again in my head but I can't. It's like when you have an embarrassing moment and all you want to do is forget about it and totally put it behind you but you can't. And every time you think about it, you just get embarrassed all over again.

I close my eyes hard to try and get my cheeks to stop blushing but when it's clear that I'm not going to be able to do that, I just shake my head at my own shame and grab my cell phone. I wanted to enjoy the rest of my break in quiet solitude while staring up at the clouds but if I sit here in silence any longer, I'm just going to keep thinking about last night and I'm going to make it even harder to look him in his eye when I see him this afternoon. So I unlock my phone, go to my contacts and tap on her name. I put the phone against my ear and listen to it ring as I think to the fact that it's Monday and I can't remember her schedule enough to know if she has anything planned on Mondays that might hinder her from answering her phone. She finally answers on the fourth ring. "Hey baby, I was gonna call you later…I thought you were at work, what are you, on break right now?" She sounds really happy and chipper and I'm not surprised. It's noon down here in Florida, which means that it's earlier up there in New Jersey and the fact that she's chipper doesn't surprise me because she always has been a morning person.

"Yeah, I'm on break." I clear my throat because ever since I smoked that cigarette, I feel like I'm choking on smoke. I really gotta stop smoking. "What are you doing?" I manage to choke out before I'm thrust into a coughing spell. I cover my mouth with my forearm, hold the phone away from my ear and cough hard to get everything out of my throat. When I put the phone back to my ear, I catch the tail end of her asking me if I'm alright. "Yeah…" I cough softly one last time and clear my throat hard. "I'm okay." I sniff and wipe my eyes because they started to water as I was choking. She asks me what I was choking on and I'm trying this new thing called "let's not lie to mom" so even though I know she's probably gonna give me an earful, I tell her the truth anyway. "I'm outside and I was smoking a cigarette…smoke's all caught in my throat now."

"…That's what you get." She hesitates at first but that's all she gives me. I've noticed that my mom's been trying to act better towards me too. I've been trying to keep a handle on my smart mouth and my annoyance with her and she's been trying to take steps back. During her last few days here, she started to loosen up a bit and she stopped touching me all the time and stuff and she stopped nagging me. It's not perfect but we're making steps to better our relationship. "What are you smoking for anyway, Jo?" Her tone switches to the stern, motherly kind of tone and that's the kind of reaction I was expecting her to give the first time around. "You don't smoke unless you're stressed out. You know how nasty those things are for you. What the hell are you puffing on a cigarette for? What's going on down there?"

"Nothing, I just needed one." I decide to neglect to tell her about the backhanded bullying I've been a victim of these last few days. I don't want her to worry about me from all the way in New Jersey and plus, it'll die down eventually. They'll get tired of picking with "waitress girl" and as long as I stick with Alex, they'll see that they're not going to tear us apart and they'll stop. It's not that big of a deal anyway. I would tell her if people were causing me bodily harm and things like that but they're not so I see no point in telling her. "…Something happened with me and Alex last night." I deliberated for about five seconds on whether or not I should tell her and I figured that I might as well. She's my mom, for one. And for two, what else do I have to lose? I've already been humiliated to death, there's not much else for me to lose.

"Something happened between you and Alex? Something that stressed you out?" She sounds genuinely concerned. "Did you guys have a fight?" Actually, I think I might've made a mistake by telling her. It just really dawned on me that I'm about to tell my mother about my sex life and I've never done that before. She had the sex talk with me when I was eleven and started my period and even then it was awkward. I tried to tell her that she really didn't have to give me the talk because by then, I knew all about stuff. I knew what happened when boys get happy, I knew why things get wet and I knew where to put the things. I went to public school, the kids I was surrounded by did a pretty good job of telling me about it. But my mom insisted that she tell me about the birds and the bees and she sat me down and gave me the talk. She tries to talk to me about sex every once in a while but I think it's way too weird to talk to my mother about stuff like that. I hate talking to her about sex and I just opened up this can of worms. "Josephine? Answer me. Did you guys have a fight? Did he hit you? Did you hit him?"

"No…nothing like that." I shake my head as if she can see me. "Nothing like that at all. It just…" I take a deep breath. If I don't tell her, she's never going to let it go. She's gonna bug me about it until the end of time so I sort of HAVE to tell her but I just really wish I would've picked a better day to start my "no lying to mom" pact. "If I tell you this mom…you have to promise me you won't repeat anything I say to ANYONE. Okay?" She remains silent. "OKAY?!"

"Who am I gonna tell, Jo?!" She yells back out of annoyance.

"I dunno, I just wanna make sure I cover all bases." I sigh. "Are you alone?" She mumbles "mhm" into the receiver. "…Me and Alex had sex last night. Err…we _tried_ to have sex last night…and it didn't work out." She's still very quiet which, oddly enough, comforts me to an extent. "Mom, it was horrible. We were kissing and then next thing I know, my shirt's off, my bra's off and we're having sex. No warning, no foreplay, no…condom or anything. He didn't even let me take my underwear off and he didn't take his boxers off either. It was like…it was kind of like he wanted to make it a quickie. And I mean, I know I can't have babies anyway but like…he didn't even act like he wanted to put a condom on. It was totally unprotected and it was really weird. And like…" I feel that flush of embarrassment come over me again but this time it's worse because I'm embarrassed to be explaining this to my mother and I'm embarrassed to be reliving that moment. "Okay, we were…doing it. And I was on top and you know how when you're on top…you're supposed to be in control. Like…you're supposed to…you know…" I'm about to die of embarrassment.

"You were riding him?" She just says it like it's the most casual thing she could possibly say. She said it like she's telling me what day of the week it is or what the weather is like. No ounce of shame, embarrassment or modesty.

"I was supposed to be…I thought." I can't even put into words what happened last night. I'm struggling so badly right now. "So I was trying to. I was moving and stuff, you know. But he wouldn't…let me? He was trying to control it but I was trying to control it too and it ended up being really weird, mom. It was so uncomfortable and then…It was like two minutes and he went…soft." I mumble the word "soft" and look down at an ant crawling next to my foot. "So I just got off and we didn't say anything about it… and now things are weird. I just…I wanted it to be good for him. It was our first time and he seemed like he was really into the dirty talk and stuff so I tried to talk dirty too. And I was trying to impress him and it kind of backfired. I just wasn't being my normal self…I'm not a yeller or anything like that and I tried to be and it was bad."

She takes a deep breath and with that, I can tell that I'm in for a lecture of some sort. "Well first of all, you don't need to be having unprotected sex with him. You can't have a baby but that doesn't mean you can't catch something. Now, I'm not saying that Alex is dirty. I'm not saying that at all. All I'm saying is that you and him didn't talk about these things just yet and I know you haven't. You don't have unprotected sex with a man until you know for sure that he's 100% clean. You're 29 years old, I shouldn't have to give you the safe sex talk. You didn't notice anything abnormal on him down there though, did you? Bumps? Rashes? Sores? Ulcers?" I mumble "huh-uh" and let her continue. I decide not to tell her that the lights were off so I really couldn't tell. The lights were off both times I did something sexual with Alex. In truth, I really can't tell you what his penis looks like. I know that it's thick, it's fairly long, it's veiny and he's circumcised. I can tell you what it tastes like, sure. But I can't tell you what he looks like and that's kind of embarrassing. My mom's right, I was a tad bit irresponsible with everything. I know for a fact that Alex is clean and he's not going to give me a STD but still. We never sat down and discussed anything about past sexual experiences and we never came out and told each other that we were clean. He very well could've had AIDS or something and not only did I sort of have unprotected sex with him last night, I also went down on him and swallowed. For the record, swallowing isn't something I do. I've only done it twice. Once to my husband and once to Alex. I didn't go into it with the intention of swallowing, either. He just did it in my mouth and I could've spit but I didn't see the point when half of it already went down my throat in the first place. "Second of all, have you tried to talk to him about it?" My mom continues with the second part of her lecture.

"Not really. I mean, I told him this morning that I thought we should talk about it but I didn't really push the issue. I kind of just left it at what it was. I'm too embarrassed to even look him in his eye. It was awful mom. It was the worst two minutes of my life." I rub my temple because I feel a headache coming on. "And we're supposed to go sign Lyla up for preschool when I get off of work but I really don't know if I can face him, mom. It was seriously awkward."

"Well there are pills for erectile dysfunction, does he know that?" She laughs. "He's pretty young, he should be lasting longer than two minutes."

"This isn't funny, Teresa. I'm seriously freaking out here and you're making a joke." I try to keep myself serious but I have to admit that that joke was pretty funny. "And it's not erectile dysfunction. He just went soft because of how horrible it was. I wasn't even…" I stop myself. "I was dry, mom. There was nothing there and he was soft. It was really bad."

"Well honey…I think you should talk to him. It's going to be an awkward conversation and it'll be a conversation you don't want to have with him but you have to talk to him about it. It's the only way you're gonna be able to move on from it. Talk to him about it. You two need to sit down and have a serious discussion. You need to let him know everyone you've been with and he needs to let you know everyone he's been with. You two need to have that talk, just so you know what you could potentially be passing back and forth because ultimately, his partners are your partners and your partners are his. Everyone that Alex has ever slept with, you're now sleeping with and vice versa. So you have to talk to him about that. And then maybe you two can discuss what went wrong last night. To me, it sounds like you guys weren't on the same page with how things were going. You can't have sex with someone you're not communicating with, Jo. You know that. Talk to him about what you like and have him tell you what he likes so when you guys try to be intimate with each other the next time, you'll know the dos and the don'ts. Like maybe Alex isn't into foreplay and romance but you are. You have to let him know what you expect and in turn, he has to let you know what he expects. Don't try to imitate a pornstar if that's not what you are. You're not a pornstar, Jo and you don't have to be. Be yourself in the bedroom. You two have got to communicate before you jump in the bed and start having sex, baby. Okay?"

"Okay." I feel a little bit better after talking to her. Not completely better, but better nonetheless. "I have to go now, mommy. I love you."

"Love you too. And stop smoking, Jo."

I crack a smile. "Alright."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"It was really bad, dad. Just…awkward and sloppy and downright horrific. It was bad." I keep an eye on Lyla but essentially, I just let her do whatever she wants. There's only but so much she can do in our backyard. She's riding around the perimeter of the fence on her pink battery-powered Volkswagen Beetle and she has Lionel the lion in her passenger's seat. I don't usually let her ride that thing in the yard because the tread on the wheels dig holes all over the yard and I always have to clean the grass from underneath the wheels but when I brought her out here, that was the first thing she went for and I didn't want to take her out front to ride it. I crack open my second can of Dr. Pepper and take a sip, pretending that it's an ice cold beer that I'm sipping on instead. I could really use a beer right now but it's not even 1:00 yet and it's way too early to be drinking. "The position was bad, the way it happened was bad, the foreplay was nonexistent and it lasted all of two minutes. I can't even look at her. That has to be the highlight of my most embarrassing moments ever, and that's saying a lot for me." I don't know if telling my dad about me and Jo's horrible sexual encounter last night is the best idea but I have nobody else to talk to about it and I could really use some advice on how to fix this between us. I called him at 12:00 and asked him if he could come over so we could talk and he was over here within ten minutes. See, that's why I love my pop. He's always there for me.

"Well can I ask you why you treated her like a quickie?" My dad is one of those men that will drink no matter what time of day it is. He turns his can of beer up to his mouth and takes a sip. "Why didn't you take off your clothes and why didn't she take off hers? And why were you trying to be rough with her? And as the man, it's up to you to do the foreplay. That's your job as a man. As a man, you should make sure you please your woman and if you didn't do that, that's your fault. But my question to you is why? Because I'm sitting here talking to you and the way you talk about her, it doesn't sound like you wanted it to be like that. It sounds to me that you wanted it to go the exact opposite and if that's how you wanted it to go, why didn't you make sure it went that way? What's your reasoning? Because right now, you're not making sense to me right now."

"Because, pop. I felt like—LYLA! NO! WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT RIDING OVER THERE?!" I stand up. I have to pause me and my dad's conversation to yell at her real quick. I told her not to ride her car over by the water hose because there's a sticker bush over there and if she falls into it, I'm not cutting the stickers out of her hair and off her clothes and I'm not listening to her cry. She stops her car with her hands still on the steering wheel and looks at me like she didn't understand anything I said. "MOVE IT!" She just keeps looking at me with that blank look on her face. "IF YOU DON'T MOVE IT RIGHT NOW, I'M TAKING IT OFF OF YOU AND YOU WON'T RIDE IT NO MORE. NOW MOVE IT AWAY FROM THERE."

"…Nooo…" She looks away from me and down at the floor of her car. "I wanna ride my car, daddy…"

"THEN RIDE IT OVER HERE! NOT OVER THERE! I ALREADY TOLD YOU ABOUT IT! NOW MOVE IT!" She doesn't make any effort to move. "1…2…" She pushes the reverse pedal and moves it away from the bush like I asked. I hate it when she's being ornery. On the hole, Lyla's a pretty good kid. She listens to me, she's timid, mild-mannered and she doesn't get into much trouble but there are days where she just wants to blatantly ignore me and act out and I think today's fixing to be one of those days. I'm not dealing with it though. I'll send her to her straight to timeout. I roll my eyes at her "my way or the highway" attitude and sit back down in my chair. "Anyway…" I continue with our conversation where we left off. "When we were making out, she pushed me down and she got on top of me. So I just felt like maybe she wasn't into that slow, passionate, romantic stuff. She was the one that initiated everything so I just figured she was into the hardcore, dirty talk stuff. But I kind of caught the drift that she didn't know what she wanted because I was trying to be in control and I was trying to make it fast like I thought she liked but she kept trying to slow me and the mood was just ruined by then. I went soft, she wasn't wet anymore and it's awkward now. I don't want her to think I have trouble getting it up. I don't want her to think that she turned me off either because that wasn't it. I wouldn't say it was bad, either. The sex wasn't horrible, it was just very awkward and uncomfortable. It was like we barely even knew each other. It was like I just met her that night and I was trying to figure out how to make her orgasm."

"So talk to her about it. Tell her that you got the wrong idea last night and you'd like it if you could start over. You gotta stop thinking that this one bad experience ruined your chances for good because it didn't. Having sex with a new woman is always hit or miss. You have to learn that woman's body. You have to learn all her spots, if she's more rough or more soft. It's always hit or miss and it's an experiment, really. It's all trial and error. Not everybody is going to be able to lay down with a new partner and have mindblowing sex right away. That's not realistic, come on. And it's been over a year since you've done anything with anyone. It's okay if you're off your game a little bit." He punches me softly in the shoulder. "But you've gotta tell her that what happened last night wasn't you. You have to tell her that jumping right into the rough, headboard-knocking stuff isn't exactly your thing. It's important for you to talk to her about it anyway. Have you even talked to her about your sex life yet?" I shake my head. "Well that's where you went wrong. Have you and Jo even talked about sex…ever?"

"Not really. Dad, we don't even flirt much. She gave me head that one time and that was it. I kissed her body once and that was it. We don't flirt, talk dirty to each other, talk to each other about our fetishes and stuff. It was basically like we just had sex without thinking about anything. It was like…it was like if I were to have sex with Stacy. I knew nothing about her, nothing about what she likes, nothing about what turns her on. It was just sex. Me and Jo haven't even made out before last night. I need a chance to explore her body, you know? I need to know what turns her on and stuff and I don't. The only good thing that came out of last night is that I learned kissing her neck makes her wet. That's all I learned. We weren't ready for that…we rushed it."

"Why are you jumping into having sex with her in the first place? I'm not knocking you for it being too early because I don't really think it is. You've known Jo for two months, you know what she's like and her mannerisms. It's not like she's a blind stranger. But for your relationship, it just might've been too early for sex. You guys are still new. You need that exploration period, like you said. You need time to learn her. You need time to kiss her, foreplay with her…you need time. You're right. It sounds to me like a mixture of things happened last night. It sounds to me like you two weren't hearing each other. You were trying to be rough because you _thought_ that's what she liked. She was trying to go against what you were doing because that's not what she liked. You two just weren't on the same page, that's all. Don't let it get you down." He pats my shoulder in the same place he punched it. "You'll figure it out. It could've been worse. She could've left and never spoke to you again. You two could've been mad at each other. It's fine, Alex. It's really not that bad. You just need to talk to her about it. I know your pride's hurting but if you want to fix it, you have to talk to her about it."

"Yeah." I sigh. "…She's staying over again tonight. I'll talk to her then."

 **X X X**

"Are you gonna be over for dinner tonight or are you coming over later than that?" It's still pretty hard for me to look at her. I still can't look her in her eye, knowing what a disappointment last night was. I think the feeling is mutual though, because she won't really look at me either. I think it's weird that we can't face each other now when this morning, we kissed and we said goodbye before she went to work. Maybe the time apart let the feelings set in and we both realized how truly awkward last night was because she won't look at me and I can't look at her either. We've been talking just fine but it's looking at each other that's the issue. "Because I don't know if you want to cook, order in, have me cook or go out. I'm down with whatever, it's just up to you." Words can't explain how truly sorry I am for what happened last night. I'm humiliated for sure, but more than that, I'm sorry. I didn't want last night to go that way and I feel really bad about it but I don't even know how to address the situation. How do I apologize for giving her the worst sex in the world?

"You might not want me to cook anything. I'm a horrible cook." She's looking down at her phone at something that I can't make out. She's been looking at her phone ever since I picked her up. I think looking at her phone is easier than looking at me though. I don't really think she's looking at anything in particular, I think she's just looking for an excuse to not look at me. "…I might be able to try and make something for dinner though. I can make a few things." She looks up from her phone but not at me. She looks out the window as I pull into the YMCA's parking lot. "…I could make my mom's famous bacon grilled cheese and french fries…is that okay?"

"…Bacon grilled cheese?" I've never heard of that a day in my life. It sounds like it might taste okay but I don't know. This is coming from Jo's mother. Jo's told me countless times that her mom will buy chicken with the feathers still on it and pork chops with blood still on them. I don't know if I trust anything Jo's mom cooks to be honest.

"Yeah. My mom used to make those for me all the time. They're delicious. You fry the bacon first and you put it in between the grilled cheese. It's so good." She explains it to me. I don't want to be a smartass, but I could've guessed what bacon grilled cheese is. It's pretty self-explanatory, she didn't have to elaborate. I'm not a complete idiot. I grunt to let her know that I don't know about that. She sucks her teeth. "Do you like bacon?" I mumble an "mhm" at her. "Do you like grilled cheese?" I say "mhm" again. "Then you'll like bacon grilled cheese. Trust me, it's really good."

"We'll try it. But if it's nasty, it's going in the trash and I'm ordering a pizza." I turn off the car and turn around to face the backseat. "You ready Ly?" She's sitting up tall in her car seat and trying to see out the window. The look on her face says it all. She's scared to death to be here. When I called the YMCA this morning to see what kind of legal documents I was going to need to bring, they told me that she's going to meet her teacher today and we're going to take a look at the classroom she's going to be in. I tried to dress her nicely being that she's going to meet her teacher. I put her in a neon blue shirt with sparkly ballerina slippers on the front and I put a flowy white skirt on her. Her shoes are sandals and they're the silver like the slippers on her shirt and I let her wear her hair down for once. I found a blue headband and stuck that on her head. I think I did pretty well for being a guy. "We're just gonna sign up for preschool. I'm not leaving you here. Are you ready?" She shakes her head.

"Just wait until you get inside." Jo turns around and looks at her too. "You're gonna love it." Lyla shakes her head again. "Don't be scared, baby. You're gonna be fine. You look pretty today and you're gonna be a big girl. You're gonna be fine." She gives her a thumbs up but Lyla still looks pretty apprehensive. "Gimme a thumbs up. It's gonna be okay." I think my daughter's going to burst into tears.

"Let's get this over with." I mumble to Jo and I see her nod from the corner of my eye.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I've held Lyla's hand plenty of times before and I'm not kidding when I say that this is the sweatiest I ever remember her hand being. We're not even in the building yet and her hand is already slipping away from mine because it's soaking wet with sweat. I asked her back when I got her out of her car seat if she was nervous and she claimed that she wasn't but her hand is telling a different story. Despite the fact that she's obviously nervous, she seems to be in good spirits though. "And we got bad blood…mad love…baby baby bad blood…big problems…I don't fink we can solve em…you maked a weally deep cut…baby and we got bad blood." As we're walking, she's innocently singing the song that was just playing in the car before we got out and making it a point to step on every crack in the parking lot. I've never heard her sing before. I remember her telling me that she really likes Taylor Swift so I'm not surprised that she'd be singing a Taylor Swift song, but I am surprised that she actually is singing. I've never heard her sing a song. I've seen her dance, but I haven't heard her sing. It's the cutest thing I've ever heard in my life too. Her little voice is already cute as it is when she talks but her little voice when she's singing melts my heart. I fall in love with this little girl more and more every day. "Daddy?" She stops singing much to my dismay and looks up at Alex.

We probably look like a family with the way we're walking through the parking lot. Lyla's in the middle of us and me and Alex are holding her hands on each side. "What, booger?" Alex answers her and looks down at her as she looks up at him.

"…I no hafta go to pweschool if I don't like it, wight?" She still looks pretty nervous but her voice doesn't have any nervousness in it. I'm actually pretty impressed with the way Alex dressed her today. Her shirt is a neon blue color, almost teal and her skirt is white with the flowers on the bottom that are the same shade of blue as her shirt. Her sandals are cute and they're silver like the ballerina slippers on her shirt and her hair looks really pretty. He put a blue headband with a silver flower on it in her hair and her hair is actually down for once instead of being tied up in a ponytail. She looks like a little baby doll; she's so pretty. "You not make me go…huh?"

"You have to go to preschool, bubs." Alex lets her hand go and rubs her hair. "If you give it a chance, you'll like it. I promise." He walks ahead of us and opens the door to the building. He holds the door for us and steps aside. I help Lyla through the door first and follow her inside. It looks really clean in here, that's a plus. I notice a yellow arrow on the wall that has "Preschool Registration" written on it in black marker so I motion with my head for Alex to follow me and he does. We walk down a long, red carpeted hallway and so far, Lyla's still hanging in there. At the end of the hallway, there's another arrow that points to the left and we make the left. Finally, there's a desk in front of a set of double doors and two women are sitting at the desk. They're both older, with gray hair and glasses. They look like they could be twins. "Hello." Alex greets the two women as I linger in the back with Lyla. She's not paying attention to Alex. She's looking around and staring at the things on the walls. I'm listening to Alex though. "Yeah, we need to sign her up for preschool…she's four."

"You can sit at that desk right there and fill out one of these forms." One of the ladies hands him a clipboard with a paper on it and a pen. "Bring it right back here once you're finished and we'll take it from there." She smiles at Alex but eventually, her eyes make it to the little girl holding my hand and her face turns completely child-friendly. She waves at Lyla but all Lyla does is give her a very shy little smile and turn her head away from her. She squeezes my hand tighter and starts following Alex. I follow him as well. I don't want to psych her out, but I'm so proud of her right now. She's being so grown and mature. She hasn't even asked to be held yet.

Lyla looks at the walls again and I look over Alex's shoulder and watch as he fills out the forms. I know things have been pretty awkward between us as of late, and I'm not even able to look at him without getting embarrassed but I don't want him to think I'm mad at him or anything. I'm still here for him and I still want to be with him. To show him that, I rest my hand on the back of his neck and caress it as he's writing Lyla's information down. I can't help but read all the information he's writing down.

Name of Child: Lyla Karev

Male or Female: Female

Birthdate: July 15, 2011

Parents: Alexander Karev

Are You This Child's Parent or Legal Guardian?: Parent

Best Number to Reach You: 863-555-0823

Alternate Number:

Full Address: 806 Pembroke Drive

Email:

Emergency Contact If You Cannot Be Reached: James Evans

Number: 863-555-0938

Alternate Contact: Jo Wilson

Number: 617-555-3598

Aside From You, Are There Any Other People Authorized To Pick Up Your Child?: Yes

If Yes, Please Specify Two Authorizations:

Name: James Evans

Number: 863-555-0938

Name: Jo Wilson

Number: 617-555-3598

He turns the paper over and starts filling out the back as well. I need a moment to regroup. I can't believe he put me down as her alternate emergency contact and as someone authorized to pick her up. I didn't know he trusted me that much. God forbid, but if Lyla were to get seriously injured while here, I'm the person they would call if Alex nor Jimmy were to answer. I know that's a stretch. I have to count on two people to not answer before they'd call me. But still, that means something to me. He trusts me enough to have her school call me if something goes wrong. And he authorized me to pick her up. Which means if I want Lyla to come home early for any reason, I can come here and grab her. If Alex can't pick her up for some reason, I'm allowed to come get her. He trusts me enough for that. Very slowly, I take my hand off the back of his neck and bring it up to wipe away a tear that just fell. I don't want him to know that he just made me emotional by doing that, but he did. It just means a lot that he trusts me enough with his daughter like that.

Just when I think our relationship is at a standstill, he does something that lets me know that we took a step forward, actually. We might've had an awkward experience with our first time trying to have sex, but it's a big step forward that he trusts me with his daughter.

And I'll take that over having mind-blowing sex with him anyway.


	40. Details

**A/N:** Not much happens in this chapter, but I will say that something pretty important to the story happens. It's a small detail and it's pretty much swept under the rug, but it's important so just make sure you pay attention.

 **M** rated language in this chapter, reader discretion advised.

* * *

I turn on the faucet and make sure the water is hot, but not hot enough to burn me. I rinse the ketchup off the three plates sitting in the sink and load them into the dishwasher once they're relatively clean. I place a packet of dish detergent in the compartment inside the dishwasher, close the lid and shut the door. I turn off the faucet and go over to the counter near the fridge so I can put away the carton of Minute Maid. I screw the cap back on and stick it back on the top shelf of the fridge. For the first time in a few hours, I'm alone. There's no Alex and there's no Lyla and quite frankly, that relieves me. We haven't argued or fought at all today but there's still been awkward tension for the fact that we haven't really looked at each other at all today. I kind of wish that I hadn't told him that I would stay the night tonight because I really can't fathom how this is going to work out when we're going to sleep in the same bed but we can't even look at each other. I was actually dreading the moment it got late. We signed Lyla up for preschool and that was fine because we were preoccupied with something else. We went to the store to pick up things for dinner and again, that was fine because we were preoccupied with something else. I made dinner while he gave Lyla a bath and I didn't have to see him but we ate dinner together and I and I had to see him again. I played with Lyla for a little while before I took a shower but she had to get ready for bed so Alex is in the shower, she's upstairs in bed and I'm down here cleaning up and I'm alone.

I was dreading the moment it got late because I knew that once the sun started to go down, Lyla would inevitably have to go to bed and that meant that Alex and I would have no choice but to be alone and face each other. I'm so scared to talk to him about what happened. I wish we could just sweep it under the rug and act like it never happened but I don't think that would be the best thing. Eventually, I'm going to want to have sex with my boyfriend and if sex with him ends up being like that every time we have it because we don't know how to communicate, I'm afraid we'll never have sex the way we should have sex in a happy, healthy relationship. So we have to talk about this. I know we do. But I really don't want to. I walk over to the light switch and turn them off so I can leave out of the kitchen. I guess I'm just hoping that Alex will somehow initiate the conversation because I don't think I'm going to be able to. I softly pad up his steps and head for his bedroom since I'm done straightening up the kitchen. I still hear the shower running so Alex must still be in there. I silently creep past the bathroom and round the corner to his bedroom.

"JoeDoe? JoeDoe?" I stop dead in my tracks when I hear my name being called by a tiny little voice. I thought I was being quiet enough to not disturb her because up until now, I was sure that she was sleeping but I guess not. Somehow she heard me. I turn back around and head towards the only pink door in the house. I push the door open slowly and find that she's still in her bed like she's supposed to be but she's sitting up and that explains how she probably saw my shadow. She's sitting up in her princess bed with her pink quilt pulled up to her neck. Her hair is resting neatly on her shoulders and she's looking around like she's scared. I step into the room and turn on the light. "…I no sleep." I can look at her and tell that she's tired though. Her eyes are heavy and her shoulders are droopy. "Can I have a nightlight?"

"A nightlight? Sure, baby." I walk to the corner of her room where she keeps all her Barbie stuff and bend down to turn on the little purple flower shaped nightlight. Alex must've forgot to turn it on for her. "Is that better?" She nods her sleepy little head but doesn't lie down. "You need to go to sleep, Lala." I go over to her bed and sit down next to her. "Why can't you sleep?" She shrugs her shoulders and I can see her head slowly falling to the side. "Come here." I grab her by her arms and pull her over towards me as I kick my legs up and rest them straight on her bed. Her head lazily falls on my left breast and she drapes her arm across my stomach. I pull covers over her to make sure she's nice and warm and start stroking her silky, light brown hair. "Did you like your preschool?" I stroke her hair upwards towards my face and use my other hand to rub her hand. She nods her head and I watch her eyes close. "Yeah? I told you you'd like it." I think she did well with touring her preschool today. She held onto Alex's leg for a while but once her teacher started to show her the computers and the circle mat and the bookshelves, she opened up a little bit and told the teacher that her name was "Lyla Bella Karev." She shut down a little bit again after the teacher told her that she was "so pretty" but Alex nudged her and made her say thank you. I think it's a nice little school for her. It looks really kid friendly and the room she's going to be in is themed after the book "Where The Wild Things Are", so there are little palm trees and vines and stuff all over the walls. The teacher said that so far, they have a total of 15 kids signed up and I thought that was good because I'd rather her meet 15 kids her age than only a few. "Are you excited to go?" She nods her head again but this time, the nod was weaker so I know that she's well on her way to sleep. I lean my head down and put my lips to the top of her head. I start moving her arm away so I can get up. I lay her head gently on her pillow and make sure the covers are evenly distributed over her little body. I watch her eyes blink just softly before she nestles her head further into her pillow and closes them for good. I bend down and kiss her cheek. "Goodnight, Lala."

She starts breathing softly and rhythmically like any human being breathes when they're on their way to being in a deep sleep. "…Night night…" I hear her little voice call out full of drowsiness, which makes me smile. "Mommy…" She whispers one more thing after she tells me goodnight and I have to pause. I don't know if I heard her right. She was mumbling a little bit and she was in and out of sleep so I don't think I heard her right. It kind of sounded like she called me…no, she probably didn't. I shrug it off and leave out of her room. I'm almost certain that I misheard her so I see no point in getting myself worked up or anything over it. And if she did call me what I think she did, she probably won't ever do it again. She was delirious with sleep and if she did call me that, it was probably because of that. Actually, she probably didn't even call me that. She was probably starting to dream and she was having a dream about that person, that's why she called me that. She didn't call me that. No big deal, no reason to freak, no reason to tell Alex about it because she didn't call me that. She just said it. It wasn't directed at me, she just said it. I close her door behind me once I leave and halfheartedly go to Alex's room.

He's all fresh out of the shower, wearing a pair of light blue pajama pants and a black tank top. He's laying down on his bed, flicking through TV channels for something to watch. I close his door behind myself too and head for the bed. I know he heard me come in because his body language changed. He straightened his posture and uncrossed his legs when I came in, but he still didn't look at me. I rub my lips together in a half-ass attempt to shake off the fact that he won't look at me and climb on top of the bed with him. I guess I have no right to be hurt by the fact that he won't look at me when I won't look at him either. It's not that I don't want to look at him, it's just that I don't know how. How do you look at someone after something that awkward happened? I lean against the pillows and watch whatever he just turned on. He just keep staring at the TV but I can tell that he's not really watching it. I wonder if he thinks that I'm upset or mad at the fact that this is awkward between us. I'm neither upset nor angry. The fact that it's awkward between us is both of our faults.

I adjust the pair of shorts I stuck on after I took a shower and slowly ease closer to him. He takes one of his hands from behind his head and extends that arm out, as if he's welcoming me to come cuddle with him. Internally, I'm smiling for the fact that he's open to me laying on him but I want to keep the seriousness alive so I don't smile externally. I don't want him to think that I'm the weaker link between the two of us. I mean, I kind of am the weaker one because I can't go another day without not looking at him without my head exploding, but I don't think he needs to know that. I put my head on his chest, rest my leg across his waist and put my hand on his chest as well. He lowers his arm down and wraps it around my shoulder and the two of us just lay here on the bed and watch TV. I think we're watching something called Cupcake Wars. I've watched his show once before but I'm not really interested in it. I'd rather be watching him than the TV but I still don't think I'm ready to look at him. He takes his second hand from behind his head and rests it on my bare kneecap. His fingertips start tracing down my leg, which makes me smile softly. "So…" I really am the weaker one between the two of us because I can't stand the silence anymore and I'm the one to break it. "Did you like the preschool?"

"Yeah." He responds right away, as if he was waiting for me to say something. His voice is eager, hints of happiness scattered all about. "I thought it was real nice and I liked the fact that it was clean. I don't know how I'm gonna deal whenever I actually have to leave her there, but it's a nice place. It made me feel a little bit better." His voice is loud and booming, but only because my head is against his chest and I can't be bothered to move it. Sure, the loudness of his voice is just a tad bit annoying but I don't want to move my head for the fact that when he's quiet, I can hear his heart beating and it's a wonderfully hypnotizing sound. "I'm a little bit excited for her though. I want her to make friends and stuff. She needs the interaction."

"She does. And I think she'll do just fine. She befriended that little girl at Disney without a hassle. I'm sure she'll make lots of friends." I close my eyes at the sound of his heartbeat and absentmindedly trace my fingertips along his tank top covered abs. "You're gonna have to be ready for…" I don't want to, but I open my eyes anyway just in case he's looking at me and he thinks that I'm trying to go to sleep. For one, I doubt that he's actually looking at me and for two, I'm not sleepy at all. I don't work tomorrow so I can stay up for as long as I want to but it's only 10:00 right now and I'm not tired. "Getting her dressed every morning, packing her lunches and things like that. Are you ready for that?"

"As ready as I'm gonna be." He shrugs his shoulders, which makes my head fall a little bit but he silently apologizes by moving his shoulder back down to re-support my head. "It's gonna be a lot for me to adjust to at first but I'll get the hang of it. I'm gonna drive her there every day, since she has to be there at 8:30 but she's gonna have to ride the bus home on some days when I work at 3:00 and stuff. My dad's not always going to be able to pick her up and you work too, so it's not like it's going to be feasible all the time. I don't like the idea of putting her on the bus though." He sighs.

"I'll pick her up whenever I can…since you put me down on the list, I'll be able to, won't I?" He nods his head and the only way I know that is because I could see him throughout the corner of my eye. "…Thanks for that, by the way. Means a lot."

"What? That I put you down to pick her up?" He sounds confused but I nod my head anyway. "…Well there might be some days where I need you to go get her for me. And I don't know…if me or my dad don't answer our phones, I'd rather them call you than anybody else…" He shrugs again but does the silent apology once more by putting his shoulder back down for my head. "I probably should've asked before I just put you down…I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking. I didn't think you'd mind…unless you do… I could always take you off. I just didn't know it was gonna mean something to you. I didn't think it was a big deal."

"No, you don't have to take me off. I'm just saying thank you." I want to look at him so bad but I can't bring myself to pick my head up and do it. I feel like if I look at him, I'm going to throw up and waste away in a puddle of embarrassment. I want to look at him but I really can't. "It really did mean a lot to me that you trusted me enough to put me down like that." I clarify.

"I didn't think you'd mind, but I really probably should've asked you about it before I did it." He sighs. "You know…since our miscommunication _has_ been off the charts." He mumbles that last part.

"Yeah, I'll say." I agree with him. Well, he just left the door wide open. I cringe but push through it and swallow my pride. "I'm really sorry about last night, Alex. I…I should've…" I stutter because honestly, I don't know what I should've done. I really don't know what I'm apologizing for but I do believe that I owe him an apology. "I should've just—"

"No, that was my fault Jo." He stops me and for the second time, I can tell that he was waiting for me to say something so that he could speak up. "Let me just…" He stumbles over the words before his voice trails off. "Lemme just say that I didn't plan for last night to go that way. I didn't really plan on last night going anywhere, to be honest but I certainly didn't plan on it going that way." He points the remote at the TV and mutes it. "That wasn't me, alright? So don't think that I'm like that, because I'm not. What happened last night was NOT me. I-I thought it was you, so I tried to make it me but it just wasn't me. I don't do that. I'm more of a…a traditional kind of guy but I wasn't sure if you were a traditional kind of girl so I just made myself seem…I just…I didn't want to disappoint you. I didn't want to ruin it but that just wasn't me. I'm not like that." He sounds so nervous that my heart is breaking for him. He doesn't need to be nervous because it's just me and I'm just as nervous as he is to talk about this. "I just wanted to impress you. And I don't know what you're like." He sighs again. "I don't really know what kind of girl you are, Jo…"

"And I don't know what kind of guy you are, Alex." I admit. So it looks like we just missed each other. So he's really not the kind of guy that likes the rough stuff? He's not the no condom, quickie type? Oh thank god. We both just missed each other's mark. No one has any idea how relieved I am to hear that he's not the kind that just wants to do something quick and easy. "That wasn't me last night, either." I shake my head slowly and start twirling my thumbs around each other out of nervousness. "I don't…I don't scream or yell or…talk dirty. I don't do any of that and…I'm not into the quick stuff either. I'm sorry if I misled you into thinking that I am, but I'm not. I'm more of um…" I scratch an itch on my arm. "The quiet type. I don't scream…or moan much. I'm just…a heavy breather and a scratcher."

"So we just missed the mark completely…great." He mumbles. "Well I just wanted you to know that I'm not like that. And I certainly didn't want the first time to be like that. I-I really didn't think that it was going to happen. I didn't even have condoms, I didn't know it was going to happen. I figured I had time to go out and grab some and I guess I didn't. Anyway, that really wasn't me…and I sincerely apologize."

"It's not your fault Alex. We both just…we were both trying to impress each other and it backfired. I was trying to impress you too. I didn't want you to think that I'm some bore that's just going to lay there, but I also don't want you to think that I'm going to scream and yell and moan your name in the throes of passion because I'm not going to do that. Sorry to disappoint you…but that's really not me. And…" I tuck my hair behind my ear. We still haven't looked at each other yet but I can feel the tension easing and it's not going to be as hard to look at him as it was a few moments ago. "You don't have to waste your money on condoms because I can't get pregnant." As soon as that comes out of my mouth, I realize how dumb that sounded. I thought it to myself before I actually said it but for some reason, it didn't sound that stupid in my head. It sounded incredibly stupid coming out of my mouth though. "Not…" I speak quickly to recant my statement. "Not unless you want to use condoms anyway I'm not trying to…" I just blew it. I'm not usually that stupid. I do realize that there are other reasons people use condoms while having sex, besides trying to prevent pregnancy. They protect against some STDS and things like that. I sounded so dumb. "Just forget I said that, okay?" I'm embarrassed all over again and I'm right back to where I started with not being able to look at him. I bite my lip…hard.

I hear him snicker softly to himself but my cheeks are so red that I can't even look up to see him smirking like I know he is. "Is this you trying to tell me that I don't have to worry about catching anything from you?" I cover my face with my hands until I'm done blushing and just nod my head. "Thanks for confirming, but I kind of already knew. You don't strike me as the type to be carrying some type of disease…you seem pretty clean to me." I take a deep breath. "You're not going to get anything from me either. I'm pretty clean too…but you knew that, didn't you?" I nod again. He sighs, but more so out of relief this time. "Great. Glad we got that outta the way."

"…I've only ever had sex with three people. Well…you, if you count last night then it's four. My husband, this guy I went to a party with in college, my chemistry lab partner in college and technically, you..." I hope he doesn't think that my track record is bad. I know it's not. I know some girls my age that have more than triple that amount of sex partners so I know my track record isn't so bad but I just hope he's not judging me. "I lost my virginity in college to the man I later married but he's not the only one I had sex with."

"College?" He sounds surprised. "Not bad. Most people don't even graduate high school a virgin. You lost yours in college?" I nod my head. "That's…respectable." He nods once as if he's proud of me and that puts my mind at ease to know that he's not thinking negatively of me. When I tell people that I was a virgin until my second semester of my freshman year of college, it usually goes one of two ways. Some people respect me for it, like Alex just did. But most people think I'm some kind of prude that's afraid of penises or something. I was a virgin until college but it wasn't exactly by choice. I wasn't exactly the most desirable girl in my high school for one but surely I could've found SOMEONE to have sex with me. Guys I went to high school with would screw anything with female parts. It's not like I didn't want to lose my virginity in high school, because I did. I just didn't want to lose it so someone that was going to blab about it to all his buddies and I had some kind of internal rule that I wasn't going to have sex with a boy unless he was my longtime boyfriend. I didn't have a boyfriend in high school though. I didn't get pretty until college. "I lost mine when I was 16 to Jenna but like you, she wasn't the only one I've been with. I've been with…six, maybe seven if you count this one girl I banged for a minute the other day." I raise my eyebrow and look at him. Is he serious? "…You, Jo. You."

"…Oh. Better be me, I was about to knock your head off and go home." I feel myself calm way down when he elaborates. He tilts his head in a questioning kind of way. "…You said you don't know what kind of girl I am, didn't you?" He nods slowly, still looking at me with that questioning look on his face. "Well here it goes. I don't like flowers, so don't ever get me flowers. If you want to appease me, get me food…but not chocolate, I prefer Doritos. I like teddy bears, but not the oversized ones, the smaller ones are perfect. I appreciate a good dinner and a movie, but don't take me to see a RomCom because you would've wasted your money. I hate Nicholas Sparks and all the cheesiness that comes with those romantic movies. I like scary movies but I will settle for a good action movie. And I'm the jealous type. It's a flaw, it's a fault but I embrace it ad I don't see the point in trying to hide it. I'm the jealous type and if I see you talking to another girl, I'll probably get mad and I'll probably threaten the girl's life but you have to trust that I won't do anything; I'm just making empty threats. I'm not very clingy, only sometimes. Sometimes I want to be held and kissed and caressed but most of the time, just leave me alone. I'm not ticklish, so don't even try. I get annoyed easily but I'll give you a few fair warnings before I actually blow up. I don't apologize unless I'm truly sorry, so if you get me to apologize to you, know that I really am sorry. I'm a horrible cook so don't expect me to make you some kind of elaborate meal, but if you have a recipe for something, I'll give it a whirl. Um…" I try to think if there's anything I forgot. "Oh, I don't like to fight but I will. I like to consider myself a pacifist, but I will beat somebody up if I'm pushed to that point. I'm not real big on cuddling but it's alright if you hold me while we sleep, I don't mind that. I'm a little bit obsessive, but it's not creepy. It's more of a…if I'm in a relationship with you, I want to be around you all day, every day and if I'm not with you, I'm probably thinking of you. I'm a very generous person. I'll give you the clothes off my back if you need them, but I CANNOT and WILL NOT share my food. There are three things in this world that I won't share and those things are my man, my food and secrets. I like to be kissed on the neck…if you kiss me on my neck, we WILL have sex and there's no way around it. Um…I don't really have a favorite sexual position. I like a little bit of everything and I'll try a little bit of everything…except the backdoor. I'm not doing that, so don't ever ask. Nothing goes up my ass, alright?" He starts laughing but I'm being so serious. "Alright?"

"Alright…nothing up your ass." He pleasantly agrees, which gives me the capacity to continue.

"One more thing." I hold up my index finger. "…When I fall in love, I fall hard. I'm talking head over heels, truly, madly, deeply, crazy in love. I mean…I'll take a bullet for you, kind of love. Okay? I don't love easily…and when I fall in love, I fall really hard…so if I do fall in love with you, don't make me regret it. It's not always easy for me to let people in because I hate being vulnerable and I hate getting hurt. So if I let you in, consider yourself lucky and please…please don't make me regret it." He says absolutely nothing but that's alright. He doesn't need to say anything. "I think I covered everything…"

"It's nice to finally get some insight as to who you are, Jo." He sounds very sincere when he says that. "So I guess it's my turn?" For the first time all day, I lift my head up and look at him. I'm surprised—pleasantly surprised—but surprised nevertheless to see that he's looking at me too. I missed those eyes. Those deep brown/dark green eyes. I missed them so much. "Uh…Well I'm Alex." He shrugs his shoulders and makes me laugh. "Well, I'm _not_ the jealous type. I trust that my girlfriend wouldn't do anything with anyone else but if another man touches what is mine, that will make me freak out. I'm not jealous but I am territorial. I don't like when people—men, in particular—look at or touch what's mine. And I will protect you…that's one thing about me. I won't let anything happen to you as long as you're mine. Um…I don't fall in love easy either but when I do love you, you'll know. I might not say it a lot but you'll know. And…" He hesitates. "This is actually hard…" He admits. I nod. It wasn't easy for me to just rattle things off to him either but I did it. "I don't mind PDA. I'll hold your hand, I'll kiss you, I'll probably grab your ass in public. It doesn't annoy me and it doesn't bother me. I'm not really a dinner and a movie kind of guy but I do believe in the whole traditional romance thing and I'll do whatever makes my girl happy. My idea of a date is going to a ball game or to an amusement park." He takes a breath again, like he's trying to think of some more things to say. "I don't have a favorite position either…although I can be a bit partial to the whole doggystyle thing so maybe that's my favorite." He shrugs and I smirk. "There's not really anything I wouldn't do. Um…I like legs, if that counts for anything. I don't really have a fetish for anything. I do like screamers, but I mean hey…if you don't scream, I'll live." He shrugs once more. "I can't really think of anything else. I'm a simple kind of guy…do I have to keep going?"

I smile at him. "No, that was perfect." I lift my head up a little more and rest my lips against his. I missed these lips too. It's so nice to have him back. Don't tell her I said so…

But it looks like my mom was right.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Do you work tomorrow?" I move the palms of my hands down and dig them deeper into the back of her hips. I've only been dating Jo for about a week now and I can already tell that I'm going to spoil her rotten. I really didn't feel like being her own personal masseuse tonight but she begged me and I couldn't say no. She got me with the "please Alex?" and it was over from there. "Because I do. I work 11-7…so I'll be home all day but I'm graveyard so I won't be back until the morning." I push my palms down into her hips and rub them up and down. She turns her head to the side of her cheek is smashed against the mattress. She's laying down flat on her stomach and I'm straddling her, sitting down on the backs of her legs. "If you don't work, do you want to watch Lyla or do you want me to get my dad to do it?" I lift her shirt up a little higher. Maybe I'm creepy or a tad bit obsessed with my girlfriend but as I'm massaging her, I'm also taking the opportunity to get to know her body. She has two very deep dimples in her lower back, just above her butt and this is actually the first time I've got a good, up-close look at her butt in just her underwear. She has a nice ass. She has the sexiest dip in her back, where it curves outward to make her ass and it's so sexy. She has those beauty marks all over her back, on the backs of her legs and I'm willing to bet that if I pulled down these tight blue and white underwear she has on, she'd have beauty marks on her ass too.

"I don't work at all tomorrow." She groans and closes her eyes. "I'll sit with her. She'll probably be sleep the whole time anyway, right? From 11:00 at night until 7:00 in the morning? She'll for sure be sleeping." She groans again when I move to the middle of her back. I've been rubbing her hips and back for at least twenty minutes and the entire time, I've been hearing and feeling her bones cracking. I don't like massaging her because it makes me want to just sit down and cry when I think about how banged up she got to have broken all the bones in her pelvis. I don't like thinking about Jo enduring any amount of pain. But then again, when I massage her, I make her feel a lot better and that alone makes me want to just massage her for hours on end. "Mmm…You can stop whenever you want…" She turns her head again. "But a little lower…you're missing a spot."

"So bossy." I put the palms of my hands on her buttcheeks and dig them in. "You mean right there?"

"How come I knew you were going to do that?" She picks herself up and holds her body up with her elbows while I'm still "massaging" her butt. "Mmm…get off of me." She mutters, pushing herself up further by digging her palms into the mattress and stretching out her back. I take my hands off her butt and move my legs out of the straddling position. When she's done stretching out her back, she rolls over and lies down on her back with her head at the edge of the bed. Since she's laying at the bottom of the bed, she tilts her head way back so she can continue watching TV, even though she's watching it upside down. I let her have the remote after we had our little talk. She turned on Men In Black and she hasn't taken her attention off the TV since. I think this is probably one of her favorite movies, or at least I'm guessing that it is. She's been quoting the movie here and there so that just proves that she's seen it more than once.

Since she's paying more attention to the movie than she is to me, I just sit down at the top of the bed as she's laying at the bottom of it and look at her. You ever just look at someone and not be able to believe that they're real? You look at someone…and you can't believe that this person is actually just like you. That person eats, sleeps, breathes, craps, barfs, hiccups, blinks, cries, pisses…everything you do, that person does. But you can't believe that? That's how I'm looking at Jo right now. She's laying down on my bed wearing nothing but her underwear and a t-shirt. Her head is draped over the side of the bed so she can see the TV but she's so relaxed and peaceful. Her feet are small, slender and soft. Her toenails are still painted dark blue and she has a beauty mark on her left Achilles' tendon. Her legs are so long and smooth, blemish free except for the slight pink scar and the many brown marks scattered about. Her legs are thin but once they give way to her thighs, they thicken and form a "V" shaped crevice, where her vagina is. Her underwear are light blue with white polka dots and white lace trim. One of her hands is resting on her stomach but the other one is draped up, near her head and since her arm is flexed upwards, her t-shirt is rising up around her waist. Her hips stick out while she's laying down and I can see her bellybutton peering out through the bottom of her t-shirt. Even her hands are perfect. They're small, thin and very delicate looking. Her nails are neatly kept and they have just one white, horizontal stripe across them. I think that's called a french tip but I don't know much about nails. Her hands aren't exempt from the beauty marks though. The one that's resting on her stomach has one near her wrist. I can't believe she's an actual person and so effortlessly flawless. Maybe I'm a bad boyfriend, but sometimes when I look at Jo, I look for flaws. I try to find something wrong with her and I just can't. There's nothing about her that I don't like.

I watch her mouth move as she quietly mouths a line to the movie like she's been doing ever since she turned it on. I lean over to the side of my bed and shut off the light so that it's dark now and the only light is coming from the TV. Jo doesn't budge when I turn the light off. I pick up her foot and again, she doesn't budge. I take her heel into my hand and start caressing it. She has such small feet. "…Would you be mad if I kissed your feet?" I ask her. She shakes her head and keeps paying attention to the movie. "How about if I stuck your big toe in my mouth?" I wouldn't do that, I just want her to pay attention to me instead. Honestly, I see nothing wrong with putting her toe in my mouth but I wouldn't do it just freely. There would have to be some degree of reward involved for me to do it. "If I started sucking on your big toe, then what?"

"I'd probably kick your teeth down your throat." She says softly but doesn't even look away from the television set. "I don't…like when people mess with my feet too much." She says, blankly without emotion. She's a little bit preoccupied with the movie right now but I want her to pay attention to ME. I press my lips to the heel of her foot and rest it back down against the bed next to her other foot. I crawl on my knees closer to her and put my hands on either side of her body once I'm level with her chest. She doesn't even look at me. Her eyes blink and I think she might be a little bit tired. She has such beautiful eyes and long eyelashes. She's so gorgeous. I lower myself down and put my lips at her collarbone and she still doesn't bother to even move. I scoot down her body just a little bit until I'm level with her navel. I lift her shirt up a little bit until her bellybutton is all the way out and lower my face down to it. I stick my tongue out and trace the tip of it around her bellybutton. She finally moves, but all she does is jolt a little bit but go right back to watching the movie as if what I'm doing is totally normal. I close my lips around her bellybutton and give it a soft, tongue involved kiss. She smells like soap. I move my head down inch by inch, leaving a kiss in my trail until I'm face-to-face with her vagina. I've been thinking about this since she gave me head. I've wanted to do this ever since that night and I finally think this might be the right time to. It's not fair that she knows what I look like, what I taste like…and I have no clue about her. I plant a kiss on it, though the outside of her underwear and she doesn't do anything, but she also doesn't stop me either. I kiss one of her thighs before I move to miss the middle of her again. I open my mouth, put it right where her clit _should_ be and close my lips around it…and that's when she moves. She twists her head forward and sits up a little. "What are you doing?" I don't say anything back to her. I just part her legs and gnaw—with my lips—at her clit through her underwear. "You don't have to do this…" She whispers but that whisper is out of pleasure. She squirms a little bit before she regains control of herself. "Alex, you don't have to do this just because I did…"

Unenthusiastically, I pull my lips away from her so I can talk. "I'm not. I want to." I give her another soft kiss in her middle. "I've wanted to long before you did. I wanted to back in Orlando…so shut up and lie down." She says not another word and flops right back down on the bed. I curl my fingers underneath the rim of her underwear and pull them down but they're so tight that she has to wiggle to help me. She elevates her hips for me and I give one more good tug and off they come. She closes her legs to make it easier for me to take them completely off. I loop her feet through the holes and toss them off the bed and out of my way. I open her legs up again and well, she's perfect just like I knew she'd be. She's cleanly shaven and perfectly smooth. No razor bumps, no traces of hair anywhere…which leads me to believe that she waxes it. If she does shave it, she does a damn good job. I find her clit again and immediately put my lips on it again. I feel her hand moving around on the bed and once it stops, the TV is off and it's pitch black in here.

I separate her folds by moving my tongue from side to side and when I circle around her hole, I find that she's already just a little bit wet; probably from me teasing her clit when her underwear were still on. I'm not surprised, because everything about her just seems to be perfect, but she tastes sweet. I put my thumb on her clit and gently tease it up and down while I stuff my tongue inside of her. She gasps and puts her hands on the back of my head. I gently scoop around the inside of her with my tongue before pulling it out to suck on her clit again. She whimpers once I close my lips around her clit and when I give it a gentle suck, she arches her back and bucks her chest forward. "Oh my god!" She was pretty loud there. I thought she said she wasn't a moaner or a screamer. I hold her still by putting one of my hands on her lower stomach, but I use my free hand to pleasure her. I gently ease my index finger, and only my index finger, inside of her. She fits around my finger like a glove, snug and tight. I tease my tongue along her clit, sucking it here and there while I dart my finger in and out at a fast but still steady pace. She's whimpering like crazy and dear god, it's sexy. I can tell she's trying to keep herself from moaning. I want to hear what her moan sounds like though, so I swirl my tongue around her clit, suck on it again and start moving my finger in a "come here" kind of motion. "W…ow, okay…oh my god…" She's trying to push my head away. I fight the urge to proudly smirk and continue with my finger, since that seems to drive her wild. "Uhhh!" Finally, she moans for me…and she won't stop. "Uh! Oh my goddd…" She keeps trying to push my head away. "Mmmmm…" She stops pushing and starts stroking my hair as she puts her lips together and hums. Her moan is so sexy. I'm glad I made her moan instead of her being quiet like she said she was going to be. Her moan is so sexy that I don't think I could've gone without hearing it. It's mellifluous, almost sounding like she's singing a song of some sort. I tilt my head to the side to get a better angle on her clit and begin teasing it with my tongue again. "Mmmmm! Oh god!" She starts backing away from me, and I know that she's either about to orgasm or she's close to it. Usually that's what it means when a girl starts to run away because it feels too good for her to sit there and take it. "Oh my god!" I start sucking on her clit again and she goes full out nuts when I do that. First off, she gets so wet that she starts dripping down my entire hand and she's trying to get off of the bed. I don't want to, but I take my finger out so I can use both my hands to hold her still and make her take this. I hold her very still while I keep sucking on her clit and she's moaning like crazy; there's nothing "quiet" about her. "Ah…" She gets the first syllable of my name out before she's overcome with more moans. "Alex! Alex…ssttop….you're gonna…you're gonna make me…" She doesn't even finish her sentence before it happens. …She never told me she's a squirter…that's so hot.

I kiss the outside of it one last time before I let her go. Her entire body is just plain limp. She's breathing so hard that she's huffing and she's just laying on the bed limp. I kiss her stomach again and make my way up to her cheek. I hear her mumble something under her breath about it being hot in here, but that just goes to show that I ate her out pretty good because it's FAR from hot in here. The air conditioning unit is on and so is the ceiling fan. I kiss her on her cheek and just listen to her recover from her orgasm. "…You failed to mention that you're a squirter."

"…I didn't know that I was…" She whispers in between gasps for air, amazement and shock clear in her voice. "...I'll go get a towel."


	41. Not Exactly As Planned

I peel off the green tape around the napkin and unroll my silverware so I can use my fork. He tried to take me to a very expensive restaurant down the street from this place but I didn't want him to. I still think he's a little bit clueless as to what kind of girl I am so with experience, I plan on showing him. First and foremost, he should know that I'm not an expensive date. I'll settle for a cheap restaurant and a cheap movie. For me, it's not about the fanciest theater and the best tasting food; it's all about the fact that I get to spend time with him. He tried to take me to this Italian place called "The Villa", but I caught one look at it and I told him no. Even the building looked expensive. It was made of this pretty white stone and it had a green and red pavilion hanging around the outside and just looking at it, I could tell that it was going to cost him an arm and a leg for us to eat there and that's not the kind of girl I am. It took a little bit of haggling from me but eventually, he understood that I was serious when I told him no and he took me elsewhere. This place isn't much of a slum either, but it's way less expensive than the place he was going to take me.

It's still an Italian place and it's called "Ciccanti's." It's decorated quite nicely and it's a pretty formal restaurant but at least the silverware is wrapped in an actual paper napkin as opposed to being wrapped in a cloth napkin like I know it would've been had we gone to the first place. I offered to pay for a few things but Alex is so old fashioned that he refused to let me. I was going to drive my car but he insisted that he picked me up. So since he offered to drive, I told him that I would give him gas money. He told me to shut up. I told him that I'd pay for the movie since he's paying for dinner and again, he told me to shut up. I'm more of a modern kind of dater and Alex is old fashioned. I'm not the kind of girl that just expects for the man to pay for everything. I don't mind going in half with everything on the date, whereas Alex is a firm believer in the man should pay for everything. I just decided not to argue with him over it though. I pick up my fork and nudge a piece of grilled chicken away from the top of my alfredo. "Do you work tomorrow?" I ask him, twirling my fork around to gather up some fettuccine noodles up. I stab the piece of chicken with the tines of my fork and shove it in my mouth. His face is down, hovering over the bowl of spaghetti that his chicken parmesean came over while noodles hang out of his mouth. He nods his head and slurps up the noodles and licks his lips. "Bummer…what time?"

He licks his lips again, swallows and opens his mouth. "7-3. I'm guessing you don't work?" I shake my head and take another bite of my food. "You wanna stay over tonight and watch Lyla until I get off tomorrow?" I haven't stayed over his house in three days. The last time I stayed over was the night he went down on me. I haven't been able to stay over anymore because our schedules have been pretty conflicting. I worked morning shifts on Wednesday and Thursday and yesterday I worked an afternoon. Alex worked mornings on Wednesday and Thursday as well and last night, he worked a midnight. The last time I stayed over his house and worked a morning shift the next day, I was so incredibly tired at work that I fell asleep on my break, so I just decided that I shouldn't sleep over his house when I work mornings the next day anymore. I've been missing Lyla since I haven't really spent time with her in the last few days. On Wednesday and Thursday, I walked down to see her and Alex for a little bit and I didn't see her at all yesterday so I'll watch her tomorrow. "Unless you got some stuff you have to do tomorrow, then I'll tell my dad to watch her."

"No, I'll watch her. I do get paid tomorrow though, so I might have to drag her into town with me so I can buy a few things but that's all. I won't mind watching her." Needless to say, I haven't told him that she may or may not have called me "mommy" a few days ago. I still don't see a reason to tell him. Granted, I haven't been around her much in the last three days, but still…she hasn't said it again, which leads me to believe that she was just falling asleep and beginning to dream about her mother. "You don't mind if I take her to the store with me, do you?"

"No, I don't care." He shrugs his shoulders and picks up a breadstick. "Just don't let her talk you into buying her anything. She can be very persuasive." I grin when he says that because believe me, I already know how persuasive his little girl can be. She conned me into getting her an entire box of Popsicles once just by looking at me with those big green eyes. "Jo? Can I ask you a question?" He dabs some of his spaghetti sauce with his breadstick and holds it next to his mouth. I'm in the middle of taking a sip of my Cherry Pepsi, so I just nod my head. "How are you so good with kids if you don't have brothers, sisters or children of your own? Did you babysit a lot?" I know he didn't mean anything by asking me that, but it kind of struck a nerve. Of course I know that I can't have babies anymore but it still hurts whenever I think about it. He clearly didn't mean to hurt my feelings though, so I'm not holding it against him or anything like that.

"I've actually never babysat a day in my life until I met you." I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and scratch a nervous itch on my cheek. "But I don't know…" I shrug my shoulders and mess around with a few pieces of chicken on my alfredo. It's easier to talk about this if I don't have to look at him. "I didn't want kids for a while. My dad…he was never really in my life from the get-go but he took off permanently when I was like two or something like that. And my mom pretty much just raised me alone and I saw how she struggled. Honestly Alex? I learned at a very young age that life wasn't like the fairytales you see on TV. I liked Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty just like every little girl but I always knew that they weren't real. I wasn't like…I wasn't like Lyla, for instance. I always knew that I was just watching a make-believe movie that wasn't real and if my mom would've taken me to Disney World as a child, I would've known that the princesses were just actors in costumes. So I knew that life wasn't like that." I put my tongue in my cheek. "And I kind of knew that the world was full of evil and people that want to hurt you…and I never really thought that I was going to be the marrying type. So I really just didn't even want kids. I couldn't imagine…bringing my kids up in a world where your own grandparents would turn you away if you didn't follow their religion, you know?"

"So when did that change?" He drags his fork around in his spaghetti as well. It's kind of nice to have a decent conversation with him over a nice dinner. "Somewhere along the lines, you changed your mind right? You got married and you got pregnant and I assume you were happy about that, right?" I say nothing. "So when did that change?"

"I don't know." I answer him as honestly as I possibly can. "I guess…" I start. "Well growing up, my mom always told me that there's much more good in this world than there is bad. I didn't always believe her though. Especially when…I went to my grandparents' house to invite them to my high school graduation ceremony and they turned me away and called me a bastard…I really thought that this world sucked." His expression changes and his eyes read sorrow. I forgot that I never told him about the reason I hate religion and everything that has to deal with it. Well now he knows, I guess. "When I came home crying to my mom about what they had said to me, she told me then…that my grandparents are just a little piece of the bad in this world…and she told me not to hang my head because there's more good out there. And I guess in college…I started to believe her when I met Mark. So maybe that's when it changed." I never really thought about that. I remember my dark, pessimistic days when I truly believed that I was just going to be single and childless for the rest of my life but I never really thought about when my perspective changed. I'm guessing it changed somewhere along the lines when I met Mark. I put my fork back down and look up in his eyes. "There is a lot of bad in this world, Alex…and I don't know if I believe that there's more good than bad anymore."

"I think you're right…about there being a whole lot of bad things in this world. But I don't know if I agree with you when you say that there's more bad than good. I think there's a bunch more good in it than bad…You just have to know where to find it. I mean, there are things like rapists, serial killers, _cancer._ There are things like that all over this world. You could walk outside today and get shot or have a heart attack. But there are also doctors, firefighters, war veterans…people that move to another state and befriend three year olds that lost their mothers…" I crack a soft smile when he says that. "You just gotta know where to find the good. And it's probably hard, but you gotta forget about the bad." He has a point. I pick up a breadstick and rip it in half. He has a very good point, but I don't quite know if he's fully convinced me that there's more good things in this world than there are bad things. That's just something I'm going to have to decide on for myself. "…Does it bother you?" He asks just as my mouth is full of breadstick. "Not being able to have a baby, I mean. Does that bother you? Or do you just roll with it?"

I start chewing my breadstick a little slower. He's really laying on the tough questions tonight, isn't he? I halfheartedly swallow the mouthful of breadstick and sigh. "I don't know if it bothers me." I'm truthful with him again. Normally, I don't have a problem with lying to people. I'm a damn good liar and lying is something I don't mind doing. But for some reason, I don't like lying to Alex. I don't even like the thought of lying to him. "I…I didn't really know that I even wanted kids. I mean, of course me and Mark discussed it a few times but I always thought that I would have them when the time was right and if the time was never right, I just wouldn't have them. It wasn't something that I put on my bucket list, it was just something that…if it happened, it happened, you know? I didn't know I was pregnant and I didn't know that I wanted a baby until I found out that I lost it and I never realized how much it meant to me until they took one of my ovaries. So I mean…" I shrug. "To some extent, maybe it bothers me. But it's something that I can't take back and it's something that won't happen so I don't think there's any sense in dwelling on it. Do I wish that the opportunity was still open? Yeah. Do I wish that my opportunity wasn't stolen from me? Yeah. But it's just something that I have to deal with." I sigh and stab another piece of chicken. Well, since we're on the subject… "Does it bother you?" I tilt my head and narrow my eyes. I totally hope the answer is no. I really hope that he doesn't mind me being relatively infertile but if he does, I'll totally understand. It's kind of a deal-breaker, especially when a man is as young as Alex is. If he stays with me, he doesn't even possess the possibility of having more children. He looks very confused though. "That I can't…have kids. I-I'm…not saying that we're going to be together forever, but if we are together for a while, that's something that I can't give you…if you want that."

"I already have a kid and she's enough for me. I went through it all. I've been through the sleepless nights, the gross diapers, the teething and walking and crawling. I'm perfectly fine with the kid I've got." He doesn't sound too convincing but I guess I'll have to take his word for it. I don't know if he's lying to me or if he's just trying to make me feel better about the fact that I can't have children, but I have to trust that he's telling me the truth. He uses the side of his fork to cut off a piece of his chicken breast. "…Should it?" He questions and sad as it is to say it, I'm relieved. That's more of the response I was looking for. NOW he's being truthful. "Bother me? Should it?"

I shrug. "I don't know. I mean…you're only 30. And let's just say…hypothetically, we did get married a few years down the line. Is it ever going to bother you? Because that's usually how it is, right? Don't you usually get married, start a family together…all that good stuff? And let's just hypothetically say you get married to me…that can't happen. So are you ever…going to look at me and think of all the things that I can't give you? You're satisfied with Lyla for now but can you look at me and say that you know for a fact that you're never going to want more children down the line? Children that I can't give you? Can you tell me without a shadow of doubt in your mind that you'll never want more kids?" I tilt my head again to see if I can read his expression. He looks down at his plate then back at me. Slowly, he shakes his head. "Then yeah…" I bite my lip. "It should bother you…and you should probably find someone that can give you what you want because I can't."

"I don't want anybody else though, so…" He shrugs his shoulders. "If it can't happen then it doesn't bother me. I'll live and if we do end up being together for a long time, it's not going to matter to me in the long run. I don't care. The woman that I want can't give me kids and so what. I don't want anyone else and like you said, we shouldn't dwell on it. I'll never look at you and think about the things you can't give me because right now, all I see are the things you have to offer…and I don't think that'll go away anytime soon, so this really isn't a conversation we need to be having right now." He takes a bite of his chicken and chews. How did he know the perfect thing to say? "For what it's worth though Jo…you would've been an amazing mother."

I started to fork another load of alfredo in my mouth but that just made me pause. "…Thank you." I say that with all sincerity but if I keep going on and on thanking him, I'm going to cry so I'll just leave it at a simple thank you. "So what about you?" I clear my throat in an attempt to make my tone lighter, since we just spent about ten minutes talking about something heavy. This subject is something lighter, happy even. "Did you always know that you wanted kids? Were you super excited when you found out your wife was pregnant with Lyla?" I smile at him to further ease the mood between us. He catches onto the fact that I'm trying to make this a lighter situation and he smiles too. He nods his head and I can tell that this isn't something he's thought about often. "So tell me… how'd you guys find out and stuff? What was everything like?"

"Well uh…" He takes a long sip of his drink and rubs his lips together to dry them instead of wiping them with his hand or with his napkin. "We weren't really trying. She wasn't on birth control and I wasn't using condoms, but we practiced the pull-out method, so that was our form of birth control. It's not that we didn't want a kid because we did…it just wasn't the right time and since it wasn't the right time, I pulled out to prevent anything. And it worked for a good few years." He chuckles. "But around Halloween…we were watching this Freddy Kreuger movie and the girl in the movie got her monthly…which reminded Jenna about hers. And she realized that she was late on hers. So we went out and bought one of those sticks and she peed on it and there you have it."

"Were you excited?" I actually like hearing about this. Not so much hearing about how he got his gorgeous wife knocked up and they were blessed with a gorgeous baby girl, but I like hearing about how that gorgeous little girl came about. I don't really know much about Lyla…which is fine, I guess; considering the fact that she's not my daughter but still. In a couple weeks, it'll be three months since I've been in her life and if things with me and Alex keep going as well as they're going, I'm going to be in her life for a while. I think maybe I should know a little bit more about her. Like what foods she likes and if she's allergic to anything, I mean. "Were you like…the picture-perfect husband during that time? Did you go out and fulfil her freaky cravings and stuff?"

"Ehh, I guess you could say that. I was nervous at first but after the first ultrasound, I was excited as hell. She didn't have many weird cravings and she wasn't like the normal annoying pregnant woman. I mostly just rubbed her back and stuff. And her labor was quick and easy. It lasted like three hours or something like that and she did it natural. Lyla came out perfect, of course." He says that like it's a fact that everybody knows. "Head full of black hair, brown eyes, a hefty eight pounds, fourteen ounces. She was beautiful. Still is, but you know…" I smile and nod my head. He does have a beautiful little girl. He and his wife should've procreated more if their spawns looked like that. "Jenna was her best friend…they were each other's best friends, I guess. They were pretty much inseparable…kind of like she is with you." I wrinkle my eyebrows. "She loves you, Jo…she loves you a lot."

"I love her too." I admit. I look down at my very full plate of alfredo and sigh. I can always put it in a box and take it home. I'm going to have to do that, because I'm full and I don't think I can eat anymore. "…Will you tell me about her, Alex? I just don't think I know anything about her and I mean…I probably should, shouldn't I? I don't know if she's allergic to anything, what kind of food she likes, her favorite color…can you just tell me about her?"

"Honestly Jo…you know just about as much as I do." He sounds kind of ashamed when he says that. "I wasn't always…there." The tone of his voice is sad, pitiful even. I can tell that this is something really hard for him to talk about. "Jenna and I….we were together for a very long time, alright? And I guess you could say that our relationship was a little stale at times. We had a routine and we settled into that and things were the same for a very long time. I'm not the best father in the world, by any means. I wasn't always there and quite frankly, me and Lyla just coexisted with each other. I didn't do the bedtime regime, the bath time regime…I didn't do anything with her. She would climb up on the couch with me and lie down on my lap and I'd make her get down. For the first three years of her life…I wasn't even her dad, really. I was just someone she lived with. I never kissed her, never told her that I loved her, never held her." He sounds very ashamed of himself and remorseful. "I'm not good with that kind of stuff, so I just never did. She was more of an inconvenience to me than she was my daughter. So you know just as much as I do." He runs his hands through his hair and sighs. "I suck at being a dad."

"No you don't." I reach across the table and grab his hand. "Alex, you're a great dad. You really are. I'm not just saying that because I'm your girlfriend. If you sucked as a dad, I would tell you. You really don't suck. I think you're amazing…I always have. From the first day I saw you come into the restaurant with her, I could tell you were an amazing dad. Just because you didn't show it, doesn't mean that you didn't love her. You love her a lot…I can tell. Did you say your mom tried to take custody of her after your wife died? And you wouldn't let that happen, would you?" He shakes his head slowly. "Why wouldn't you let that happen? Over your dead body, right? You wouldn't let your mom take her if your life depended on it…and that's because you love her and you know deep down that there's no better place in the world for her to be than with you. You might not have shown it, but believe me…she knows you love her." I rub his hand. "And you probably know more about her than you think." He gives me a half-smile and shakes his head as if he's saying "no I don't". I squeeze his hand. "Yes you do." I let his hand go. "Just talk to me about her. When I say 'Lyla', what do you think? Just talk to me about her."

He cracks the most awkward, goofiest, widest smile when I say her name. "Well Lyla…" He hesitates. "She's smart. A little too smart for her own good, but she's smart. And she's curious. She wants to know about everything…she likes to learn. Her favorite channel is Sprout. She likes all the shows about learning that they have on there and she'll sit on the couch and watch that for hours if she could. She knows how to work the TV better than I do. I think she can read. I mean not really read, but she recognizes words. Like…like she knows what "Spongebob Squarepants" and "Sofia the First" looks like. If she's channel surfing, she can tell what those words look like and she'll turn them on. So maybe she can read but not like…sit down and read a book kind of read. But she um…" He seems like he's just in his element now. He was so nervous at first but the more he talks about her, the more comfortable he becomes and he's just rattling things off now. "A lot of people think she's shy, and to a certain extent, she is. She's shy around new people but once she's comfortable with you, she's quite crazy. She has a very bright imagination too. She can sit in her room alone and have so much fun by herself. She's a character, too. She'll sit in front of my mirror and sing and put on concerts and act like she's Taylor Swift. Oh, and she LOVES Taylor Swift, Jo. I mean she'll go full out nuts if her music videos come on TV. She likes a lot of music but she's partial to Taylor Swift. And she likes to dance. Jenna used to have her dancing all the time. She knows the Cha-Cha Slide and that Cupid Shuffle thing. She loves dancing. Her favorite song oddly…is not a Taylor Swift song. Her favorite song is…" He shakes his head.

"What is it?" I have the biggest smile on my face too, but that's only because he's smiling and he's so giddy while he's talking about her. He shakes his head again. "Come on, you have to tell me. Please tell me." He just keeps shaking his head, laughing slightly. "Come on Alex…how bad can it be?" He starts laughing even harder. "Tell me! I won't judge…"

"…You ever hear that song that comes on the radio…" He's laughing so hard that he can't get it out. "I think it's called…" He can't stop laughing. "That one song…I'm pretty sure it's called Trap Queen…" My jaw drops. He nods his head and covers his mouth so he can laugh harder. "She was sitting in the backseat the other day and I was listening to the regular radio and that song came on…and I turned it off because it's not exactly the best song for a four year old to listen to. But I turned it off and she was like 'HEY!' So I turned it back on and she sat there in her car seat and Jo…she sang the whole damn thing. From the 'getting high with my baby' part to 'working the damn pole', she sang the entire song. And I asked her about it…and she was like 'daddy, that's my favorite song'." He starts laughing all over again and I admit, that's pretty funny so I laugh too.

"What the hell does she know about getting high and working the pole?" I shake my head. Kids say the darnedest things, don't they? Oh god, I'm so glad I wasn't there to witness her singing that song because I probably would've wrecked. I would've been too busy laughing to properly steer the car. "And being somebody's trap queen?"

"Hopefully nothing!" He shakes his head, still laughing here and there. "That was almost as bad as the time she rapped that whole 'I'm so fancy, you already know' song to me while I was giving her a bath a couple months ago." He snickers again. "Lyla's a trip. She's a handful, but she keeps me on my toes and she always gives me something to laugh about. Don't know where I'd be without her." He looks at me again. "…She's allergic to grapes. Anything grape flavored, she can't have. And she doesn't like strawberries. She likes strawberry flavored things, but she hates actual strawberries. And she's allergic to blueberries too…you should probably know that."

"Thanks." I smile at him. "See? I told you that you knew more about her than you thought."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

Instead of going straight home when I come off of the highway, I have to take the route that'll take me to my dad's house. The plan was for Lyla to stay over my dad's house until Jo went to go pick her up tomorrow morning around 11:00 but on our way out of the movie theater, he called me and told me that I needed to come get her tonight because she's sick. Her left ear is apparently leaking out pus again and she's running a fever and all she wants is me. Don't get me wrong, I love my daughter to death…but I'm beginning to think that I can kiss dates with Jo goodbye. It's like every time we get alone time of some sort, I'm needed elsewhere and that elsewhere usually concerns Lyla. Tonight went fantastic. Dinner was delicious and the movie was scary and I thought I was going to be able to take Jo back to my house for some extra alone time and maybe actually have sex with her tonight but of course, I have to be a dad tonight instead. I'm not mad, I'm just a little bit bummed because tonight went exactly as planned, but it didn't end as planned. "I'm really sorry our night didn't exactly end as planned…but we can always try again next weekend, if you want…I can take you somewhere else."

"Alex, why are you apologizing? I had a blast tonight. More fun than I've had in a very long time. Don't apologize for that." She slides her hand over on the gearshift and places it on top of mine. "I had a lot of fun…and now we're back to reality…your daddy-duties are calling." She squeezes my hand. "Aaaaand…how about I take you out next time? Maybe we can go…mini golfing or something. I dunno, let's just have fun. My treat next time though." She's been doing this all night. Trying to go half with me, trying to pay for things on her own. I appreciate how she's trying to be sweet and thoughtful but chivalry is not dead and I'm the man. I'm supposed to pay for everything. "Come on, Alex. You don't have to pay for everything. We're dating. It's a two-person thing. I can take you out too…and I want to. Let me take you out next time."

"…If you say so, Jo." I pull into my dad's driveway. "I'm off next Friday…you plan the date and I promise I won't pay for anything." I lean across the way and stare at her sexy, full lips. "I'll be right back…unless you want to come in with me." She stares at my lips too and before long, the temptation is way too much and we both just lean in and kiss each other. She opens her mouth and I gently slip my tongue in it. If I had to guess, I'd say that I kissed her about five or six times tonight but none of them were with tongue. Jo and I don't kiss with tongue too often and I think it's because our kisses are so precious that we don't like to squander them. When I kiss Jo…everything just falls into place and if we kiss with tongue too often, the kisses lose their specialness once they become like a habit. I kiss her hard, passionately and she matches my intensity. I pull away and kiss her sexy lips just one more time. "You coming in with me?"

"Yeah." Her voice is soft, raspy and so sexy. She nods her head. I cup her face in my hand, admiring her beauty before I remember that I'm at my dad's house to go take care of my sick baby girl. I press my lips to her cheek and open up the car door. With a very soft smile, she follows after me. "…So what's going on with Lyla?" She closes her door and waits for me. I motion with my head for her to follow me and she does. We both climb up the steps to my dad's house.

"Her ear's infected again, I think. She had a nasty infection about a month ago but I cleaned it up with some antibiotics but it came back. I think I'm gonna take her to see my friend Arizona tomorrow. I'm gonna call off work and take her up there…see if maybe she can find something that I'm missing because two ear infections in two months isn't normal." I knock on my dad's door twice before I twist the knob and open it. Sure enough, the first thing I hear when I step into his house is Lyla SCREAMING at the top of her lungs. I look back at Jo to make sure she knows it's okay to come in my dad's house and she knows that it's okay to come in, but I can so tell that hearing Lyla screaming is taking a toll on her. "Just come on." I put my hand on her shoulder and help her inside. I close my dad's door. "Daaaad! I'm here!" I yell, just to let them know that I'm here. I lead Jo through the hallway and back towards the living room, where the screaming is coming from.

I walk into the living room and I'm honestly a little bit shocked by what I see. My dad is holding Lyla down on the couch, clearly trying to force some kind of medicine in her mouth and Michelle is trying to hold her head still. Lyla is kicking her feet, screaming and flailing her arms like they're holding her down to kill her. "DADDY! DADDY!" She's screaming for me but she doesn't even know that I'm here, which just means that she's been screaming for me ever since this episode started. Her face is so red that I can very clearly see the translucent tears coming out of her eyes. "DAAADDDY! DADDY! DADDY!" She's trying to pick her head up and it's a wonder she can breathe when she's crying as hard as she is. She has a good set of lungs, clearly. I've never heard Lyla scream this way. "DADDY!"

"Let her go!" I didn't mean to snap at my dad and Michelle because truthfully, they're doing the exact same thing that I'd be doing if she was in my care. I'd be trying to give her medicine too. But it's just hard for me to see her screaming like that and I just want her to stop. My dad lets her go and so does Michelle. "Ly…come here." I walk over to the couch and pick her up. She's still crying but she's not screaming my name anymore. She's still wailing though. She's so loud that she could wake the damn dead. My ears are literally ringing. "Alright, Ly….Alright." I force her head on my shoulder and rub her back to get her to calm down. "Alright….that's not necessary." I stroke her back. "It's not necessary."

"MMMMMMMM!" She starts desperately clawing at her ear. "OWWWWIE! OWIE! OWIE!" She's pulling it so hard that she's acting like she wants to pull it off. "Ehhhh!" She's pulling at it and it's turning redder by the minute but she won't stop.

"Let me look in it. Let daddy look at it." I walk over to the couch so I can sit down. Everyone is just staring at her. Michelle is staring at her like she can't believe what she's seeing, my dad is clearly in shock and honestly, I am too. It's like she's trying to claw her own ear off. It's pretty disturbing to watch my little girl freaking out like this. She's kicking her legs, literally trying to pull her ear clean off her head and screaming bloody freaking murder. "Let daddy see it, okay? Does it hurt? Or does it itch?" I'm trying to access it but she's too frantic to even talk to me. I force her head to the side and she starts all over again with the screaming. "Lyla! You have to calm down….calm down, alright? I know it hurts, but you have to let me see. Let daddy see. He'll make it better." I try to hold her head still and for a moment, I do. She has deep, bleeding scratches on her ear from her fingernails. She's still for a second but she looks around and she saw a certain someone.

"MMMMMMMM!" She holds her arms out to Jo and tries to wiggle her head free of my grasp. Jo's standing in the doorway completely in shock too. "JOEDOE! JOEDOE!" My jeans are soaking wet from her tears, that's how hard she's crying. "JOEDOE!" Jo's like…stunned by shock. She can't even move, yet Lyla desperately wants her. "MOMMY! MOMMY! MO—" She's interrupted by a series of hiccups, but once she gets over it, she continues. "MMY! MOMMY!"

"Mommy's not here, sweetness." I'm still trying to look in her ear because there's no way she's flipping out like this over a simple ear infection. If it's infected to the point of her acting like this, then we have to go to the hospital tonight. I don't think this is just a simple ear infection. She didn't act like this when her ear was infected before. "Mommy's not here, only daddy…." I don't know how to get her to stop. She's still just shrieking the word "mommy!" but how do I tell her that her mother can't help her?

"MOMMY!" She turns towards Jo once again and holds her arms out. Is she…is she calling JO mommy?

Jo shakes her head like she's clearing her mind and comes further into the living room. "Let me try…" She whispers to me and bends down with her arms out. "Come here Lyla." Jo picks her up off my lap and holds her against her chest. Lyla immediately puts her head down on Jo's shoulder but she keeps digging at her ear. "Shhh….it's okay. It's okay…it's okay." She's bouncing Lyla like she's a baby and patting her butt. "Let's go night night, okay? Let's go night night…" Jo turns around and finds the loveseat to sit on. She sits down on the loveseat and cradles Lyla exactly like she's a baby. "Yeah…no more tears." She starts wiping her eyes. "My mommy used to hold me like this when I had a booboo." She starts rocking Lyla and stroking her hair. "Yep. One time, I fell down the steps…and I cut my knee…and my mommy held me like this and I felt so much better." I just watch them because Lyla's calming down and I wouldn't dare move her. "I know it hurts…" She looks down at her while she's rocking. Lyla's eyes are closed but she's still hiccupping from crying. "I know…no more tears though. No more tears, baby." She kisses her forehead. "All better…" I think Lyla's sleeping. "I told you…all better now."

"Mummy…" Lyla tucks her head deeper in Jo's chest and sniffs. I raise my eyebrows. When did that start?

Jo looks up at me like she wants to cry. She's clearly uncomfortable with what Lyla just called her. She looks so guilty. "…I'm sorry, I just…" She starts talking but she's stuttering, looking around at me, my dad and Michelle. I know we probably shouldn't stare at poor Jo when she clearly already feels like she's the black sheep in the room but we can't help it. She just did what none of us could do…and she's giving us all the deer-in-headlights look. "Here, you can take her." She offers and I just shake my head. I'm a little bit amazed. I don't even want to move her. She just calmed her down enough to put her to sleep. I don't know what the hell…. I don't even know if I should correct Lyla for what she just called Jo. That's a big step, isn't it? It clearly made Jo uncomfortable too, so maybe I should correct her eventually but…I'm just in awe right now. There's a piece of me that wants to be mad at Jo because she did what I couldn't do as Lyla's father. She calmed her down when I couldn't. But the way, way bigger piece of me just came to the realization that even if I wanted to…I can't get rid of this woman.

"I'm gonna take her to the hospital tomorrow morning." I whisper to my dad, who's still looking at Jo like she's some kind of miracle worker. "I'm calling off work too…" I continue to whisper. It's pretty eerie how we're all just sitting on the couch across from the loveseat in stunned silence. Poor Jo is so very uncomfortable but she knows if she moves, we all run the risk of being at the mercy of a toddler's tantrum once again, so she won't move. Jo and I can't catch a break, it seems.

Because here's another awkward conversation that we're going to have to have…


	42. Supportive

We haven't spoken since we left his dad's house and while I'd like to think that we're just being quiet because neither one of us want to risk waking Lyla back up, I really think the silence is because what actually went down back at his dad's. I believe I owe him another apology but quite frankly, I'm tired of apologizing to Alex for one and for two, I don't even know how to begin apologizing for what just happened. In all honesty, I'm still trying to process what happened an hour ago myself. When I walked in that house and heard Lyla screaming like that, I already knew that I wasn't going to be walking into something pretty and I had half a mind to turn around and go back to the car because I did NOT want to see her like that. But when I looked at Alex and saw how worried he was, I felt really bad about even thinking about leaving him and I just had to stay. So even though I was pretty much sick to my stomach hearing that little girl screaming her heart out like that, I followed him to the living room. If I had to describe what I saw when I walked into that living room, I would have to describe it as scary. There was nothing about what I witnessed that was funny, playful or cute. It was downright disturbing to see Lyla—who's usually so pleasant, happy and smiley—screaming and kicking her feet like that. She was trying to claw her own ear off for god's sake. She was acting like everyone that put their hands on her was trying to kill her and I've honestly never seen Lyla act that way and I hope that I never do see her act that way again.

When she did it a few days ago, I just swept it under the rug because in all honesty, I didn't think that she was actually calling me "mommy". I wholeheartedly believed that she was just falling into a deep sleep where she was beginning to dream about her actual mother and when she said "mommy" the first time, I didn't think anything of it. Tonight, it was pretty clear that I was just being hopeful when I thought that she was just dreaming. Tonight made it perfectly clear that she was calling me "mommy". I'm so confused right now and I don't think I can talk to Alex about it because I don't think he'll understand. I think he might be mad at me because I calmed Lyla down when he couldn't and I can understand that. If he's mad at me for that, I fully understand because for once, I actually agree that I crossed a line. I crossed a line tonight and I knew I was crossing it when I did it and I couldn't help it and I crossed it anyway. I don't know what I was supposed to do though. I could've just let her reach out to me while she was crying. I could've just walked away and acted like I didn't know that she was asking for me and calling me her mother. But what good would that have done? Usually when I do something wrong, I spend the next few hours thinking about what I could've done differently and this is a strange situation because for the first time in my life, I don't know anything that I could've done differently. The only thing I could've done differently is walk away, despite the fact that Lyla was acting demonic and screaming for me and if I would've done that, she might've never calmed down. It's not my fault that she screamed for me but ultimately, a line has been crossed and if Alex is angry with me because of that, he has every right to be.

I wish with all my heart that tonight would've gone differently. Well for starters, I wish that Lyla would've waited another two hours or until tomorrow to decide that she wants to fall ill, but that couldn't be helped. More so than that though, I wish that she would've never cried for me. I wish she would've laid on Alex's shoulder and calmed down, that way everything is nullified. I wish that it wouldn't have been me to calm her down because then, I wouldn't be in this horrible situation. Maybe I'm wrong for wallowing in self-pity right now but seriously, this sucks for me. It sucks because now I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I want Lyla to know that I'm not her mother and that she shouldn't call me her mother. I want to correct her for that, just so Alex and I can be back on good terms. But on the other hand, I'd feel so incredibly lousy if I were to correct that little girl. She lost her mother almost nine months ago, so she's already been through a lot. She used to call me "Jojo", so clearly she recognizes the fact that I'm not actually her mother. And it took her a while to be comfortable enough to even start thinking that she could call me her mother. Do I really want to take that away from her when she's already lost so much? Maybe it's comforting for her to call me that. And if it is…who am I to take away her comfort? I just don't know what I should do. I can't let her keep calling me "mommy" if it makes Alex uncomfortable and angry, but I can't correct her if I'm taking away something that makes Lyla secure. I just don't know which decision is the right decision.

During the entire ride home, I tried to make the decision based off how I feel myself. Personally, the fact that she called me "mommy" makes me extremely uncomfortable. Don't get me wrong, I sort of _do_ view Lyla as my own daughter. It's not the little sister feeling I used to get about her anymore. After Alex and I officially got together, I started to stop feeling like she was my little sister and it eventually escalated into me feeling like she's my own daughter. In some aspects, I do feel like her mother. But hearing her verbalize that she feels the same way is a little overwhelming. Add that to the fact that Alex and I just had an hour long conversation back at the restaurant about him being an inadequate father, I'm exceedingly uncomfortable with her referring to me as "mommy." It's not that I mind it, I just know that Alex minds it and if he minds it then it makes me feel strange. I don't know if that makes any sense at all but it makes sense in my head somehow. I guess this is just another conversation that me and Alex are going to have to endure.

Once we reach the landing of the steps, Alex breezes past me so he can open up Lyla's door for me. He didn't bother taking her off of me once I got her to fall asleep back at his dad's house. He opened the front door to his dad's house for me and I carried her to the car. He opened the car door for me and I held Lyla all the way home. He held his front door for me and I carried her all the way up the steps. And now, he's opening her bedroom door for me. I think her little episode freaked him out quite a bit too and he doesn't even want to take her off of me for the fear that she might wake up again and start shrieking. He pushes the door open and turns on her light. I secure her on my hip and carry her into her bedroom. I step over a few baby dolls in the middle of her floor and carry her to her bed. Alex pulls back her blankets for me and I lean down to safely deposit her in her bed. I unwrap her legs from around my waist and after that, I pry her arms from around my neck. Once she's in her bed, Alex positions her head in a way that'll let her infected ear rest on the pillow and he pulls her blankets over her. I stroke her hair one final time and smile very softly, mostly out of pity. I feel so bad for her because her ear must've really been bothering her for her to want to try to rip it off.

"I'm gonna take her to the hospital when she wakes up tomorrow morning." That's the first thing that comes out of Alex's mouth since we left his dad's and by the tone of his voice, I can hear that this is really eating away at him. My heart sinks just hearing the devastation in his voice. I feel awful. He must feel horrible knowing that I….his girlfriend comforted his daughter when he couldn't. I really think he's upset for that fact but I don't know, he could be upset just because he witnessed his daughter scream in pain like that. I'm leaning towards the former, though. "I think it might be deeper than an ear infection." He sighs, putting his hand on Lyla's head. "I don't have a scope so I can't tell. I'm gonna take her to see my friend Arizona though."

"That's good." I look down at her right along with him. She's sleeping peacefully now and if anyone heard her the way we heard her an hour ago, they would know why having her asleep is a very blessed thing. "I hope you can get it figured out tomorrow." I stroke her hair one more time. "…I should probably head home now. It's getting late." I take my hand away from her. "Call me tomorrow and let me know how her appointment goes."

"You're not staying? And you're not coming with us tomorrow?" He lifts his head up from looking at his daughter and looks at me instead. I just quietly shake my head. "Jo, why? I..." I can tell by the look on his face that he's trying to think about something to say. "I kind of need you, you know? You're the only person that calmed her down tonight and besides...we already had plans that you were gonna stay anyway." He turns and starts leaving the room so I follow him. "But if you don't want to stay anymore, I'm not gonna make you."

"No, I do. I just…" My voice trails off so I just follow him into his bedroom. I guess I could start with a simple "sorry". That can't hurt. "I'm really sorry Alex…about that. I know I crossed one of your lines, even though you said we don't really have boundaries…I still feel like I overstepped one and I'm so sorry." He hasn't said anything. He just starts to take off his clothes so he can get dressed for bed and the fact that he hasn't said anything worries me a little. Maybe he's angrier than I originally thought…I really need to say sorry better than that. "I just…I didn't know what to do. I panicked and I really didn't know that she was going to react so well to me and I swear if I had known that I wouldn't have even taken her off of you I wasn't trying to act like I'm more important than you because I know I'm not and if it makes you feel any better if it's any type of consolidation to I will tell her not to call me that anymore and I just never meant to hurt you Alex I'm so sorry I just don't want you to be mad at me over this because I feel horrible enough as it is and—"

"You rant when you're upset, don't you?" He interrupts me. I just shut my mouth and look at him. I felt tears begin to prick at my eyes but the tone of his voice just prevented them from falling. I've been around Alex when he's mad and he sounds like he couldn't be any further from mad right now. He's standing in front of his dresser with no pants on, holding up a t-shirt like he's sizing it up or something. It's almost as if he didn't pay attention to anything I said. Like he was just letting me waste my breath by ranting. I keep my mouth closed and just stand about twenty feet away from him, dumbfounded and a little embarrassed that I just made a spectacle of myself by trying to apologize for something he's not even angry or upset about. "It's okay, Jo. I know it's not your fault and I'm not mad so you can hush. You don't have to rant…and you damn sure don't have to stand there with that look on your face. I'm not mad at you." I raise my eyebrows and feel relief wash all over my body. "If anything, I'm grateful…you calmed her down."

"But you have to understand…Alex, I don't want to be more important than you." I sit down on his bed, facing him. "That's never my intention, alright? I don't have this god complex where I think you're inferior to me because I know that's not true. Alex, I'll never be…more than just your girlfriend. I'll never be more important to Lyla than you are and I really don't want you to think that I think I am. I just wanted her to stop crying like you did. And that doesn't make you a bad father, okay? Because I know that you're a bit insecure about that. I don't think you're a bad father. I was just…" I shake my head. "Anyway…I'll tell her to stop calling me that…if you want." I tuck my hair behind my ears and nervously pick at a hangnail on my thumb. "It's not the first time she did that. She did it a few days ago but I didn't say anything to you because I didn't think it was directed towards me. I can make her stop though, it won't bother me."

"…Well are you uncomfortable with it?" He tosses me the t-shirt he just spent the last five minutes sizing up and rummages through his drawer for something else. "I don't really care what she calls you, as long as it's not 'bitch'." He shrugs his shoulders and I can't help but laugh a little at that because I know how true that is. I've witnessed Lyla calling another woman a bitch before and I guess he's right about that because I'd take "mommy" over "bitch" any day. "I don't care what she calls you. But I'm not going to let her walk around calling you something that you're uncomfortable with. So if you don't like it, I'll have a talk with her tomorrow about it and I'll make sure it stops." I climb off of the bed so I can put on the t-shirt he gave me. "Are you uncomfortable with it, Jo?"

"…Not really. I mean…If you're alright with it, I guess I am too." I take the dark purple lace shirt I had on for the date off and fold it up. I take off the black tank top I had on underneath of it too. "I just don't want her to feel like I'm replacing her mother. I'm not…you know that, right? You know that I'm not trying to replace your wife." I take my bra off too and since his back is turned to me, I just put the t-shirt over my head. I wouldn't care if he was facing me while I was braless, it just so happened that he wasn't. I think once partners go so far as to give each other oral, all the barriers are broken and it's perfectly fine to see each other naked. "I just don't want her thinking that I'm really her mother, get it?"

"She knows." He pulls back the blankets on his bed. "But you know what Jo? You can't control how she sees you. You're always here. You're here when she goes to bed, when she wakes up. You've made her dinner, you've tucked her in, you've given her a bath and you've even wiped her ass a couple times. I can't control how she sees you and she clearly sees you as a motherly figure. You can't control it either. I can pull her aside tomorrow and tell her to stop calling you what she called you but telling her that isn't going to change the way she feels about you. Whether she calls you Jojo or…or mommy, the feelings are the same. I can't tell her how to feel and neither can you. She knows that you're not her mother but she can't help the way she feels about you. I know that. Which is why I wasn't even mad about tonight. I can't be mad about tonight. It's natural for a little kid to want their mommy when their sick and hurt and stuff. And she doesn't have a mom but she has you and she wanted you. How could I get mad at that? How could I get mad at her for feeling like you're her mother when that's what you are?" My eyebrows involuntarily raise but I have to fight my jaw to stop it from dropping. Did he really just say that? "Why should we sugarcoat it? Why sugarcoat it and try to make it seem like something it's not? You're her mother, Jo. A stand in, substitute mom but a mom nonetheless." I bite my lip. He takes a deep breath and runs his fingers through his hair like his life is nothing but stress. "Look…I might not know much about my daughter, but I do know that calling you that wasn't easy for her and it wasn't something that came out of the blue. She doesn't go from calling you 'Jojo' to calling you 'mommy' like that. She called you 'Jojo' when she viewed you as her friend, before you got close with her and close with me. She calls you 'mommy' because her perspective of you has changed and I recognize that." He shrugs. "It's no different than if you grew up with your best friend and started calling their parents 'mom' and 'dad'."

"It really doesn't bother you?" Once the initial shock of him basically just laying it on me that I'm practically Lyla's mother wears off, I gather myself and unbutton my jeans. "That you and I have been dating for two weeks and your daughter is already referring to me as her mother? That doesn't bother you?" I take my jeans off and fold them up as well. "You're really okay with that?"

"Uh…yeah?" He says it like he wants to say "duh" to me…like he's talking to a slow person. "If I wasn't okay with it, I would've corrected her myself like three days ago." I wrinkle my brow and jolt my head forward, silently asking him what the hell he's talking about. "Jo, there are no secrets between you and Lyla, alright? I know tonight isn't the first time she called you that. She did it three days ago when you tucked her in bed, didn't she?" I wipe the "what the hell" look off my face and replace it with guilt. "I was feeding her breakfast the next day and she asked me if 'mama' was coming back over later. I told her that her mother was in heaven and she corrected me and told me that 'mama' tucked her into bed the previous night. Took me about 30 seconds before I realized she was talking about you. It doesn't bother me, Jo. I know that I can't change how she feels about you and if she feels like you're not her friend anymore then so be it. I seriously don't mind. Because I know that as long as I'm around, she will never forget that she had a biological mother. It's not up to you to remind her that Jenna existed, it's up to me to keep that memory alive for her. If she's comfortable enough to call you her mother, who am I to stop her? As long as she knows that her real mother existed…that's enough for me."

"But Alex…it's been two weeks. We've been dating for two weeks. You don't think that's a little…soon?" I climb between the bedsheets with him but don't lie down. "It's only been two weeks since we've been dating."

He rolls his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been two weeks since we've made it official. But you and I both know that we've been romantically involved since The Fourth of July. Keep telling yourself that it's only been two weeks, Jo. It's been two weeks since we've officially been dating but you know as well as I know that my heart's been set on you since The Fourth and yours has been set on mine since then too. You know that. It's been a month since I started to fall for you and it's been two since you captured my daughter's heart. I think two months is respectable for a little girl to feel like you're more than just her friend and I think one month is respectable for me to be okay with that." I look down at the bedsheets on his bed and keep a smile to myself. I guess I can always count on Alex to be the one to stop tap-dancing around the obvious.

He didn't lie with what he just said. Sure, it's only been two weeks since we made it official but I haven't been single for the last month. In all technicality, I was single up until two weeks ago but where it counts…I haven't been single since July 4th. Physically, I was single but mentally, I've belonged to him since the moment we held hands. "You fell for me?" I pick my head up and look at him. I tilt my head just slightly and lean towards him. He nods his head and leans in too. "You really fell for me?" Our lips touch and that's it. They just touch and we pull away.

"And I'm still falling." He mumbles and that retort inevitably makes me smile. He puts his hand on my jaw and holds my face still as we kiss deeper this time. I press my tongue against his and wrap my arms around his neck. I can't explain why I always feel the need to wrap my arms around Alex's neck while we kiss. I think it's for security, but I also think it's because I just love kissing him so much and I love holding him while we kiss. I curl my fingers through his hair and start smiling through the kiss. I don't mean to ruin the kiss, I just needed to smile. He makes me so very happy that I could just burst out in tears and smile all the damn time. I forgot what it was like to be happy until I met him. We have our rough patches but in the end, he always knows what to say to make everything alright and we always get through the things that I think are going to break us. Overstepping boundaries? We got through that. Me breaking it off with him? Yeah right. Him taking another girl out to my job? That sucked but we made it. Awkward sex? That's fine too. I just…god, I love being with this man. He makes me so very happy. I think I might've found something serious.

I've been trying to take my mom's advice and try to let go of the fact that I don't feel like I deserve to be happy. I've been trying to convince myself that I deserve to be happy. And if that's true…if I do deserve to be happy, then I deserve Alex. Because he makes me the happiest person in the world. Our date didn't even go as planned tonight but that's perfectly fine with me. We were supposed to come back here alone and I think tonight was the night we were supposed to finally have sex. Neither one of us actually confirmed it but it was more of a silent agreement, in a way. We didn't verbalize it, but we both knew that we were coming back here to his empty, child-free house to end our perfect night with actual sex. Our erotic plans got ruined but I don't care because for the time I did have with him, he made me smile and laugh more than I've laughed and smiled in my entire 29 years of being alive. If I deserve to be happy then I deserve Alex.

I think it's too early for me to know if I love him or not, but I can definitely see a future with him.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Jo…" I prop myself up on my elbow and look down at her once I decide that it's time for me to stop staring at her and wake her up. I spent the last hour just watching her sleep and maybe that makes me creepy but I've already admitted that I'm slightly obsessed with my girlfriend and her perfection. Her mouth twitches while she sleeps sometimes like she's trying to talk but nothing comes out and I think that's both sexy and cute at the same time. She looks so relaxed and at ease while she sleeps. She's laying flat on her back with her head turned towards me. One of her hands is resting on her stomach and the other one is bawled up in a fist, resting on the pillow next to her face. She's a peaceful sleeper too. She doesn't make any noise and she doesn't move around much. I put my lips to her temple and whisper her name again. "Jo…" I really wish we could've enjoyed each other last night. I made sure my dad would watch Lyla overnight just so Jo and I could have the house to ourselves. I had it all pictured in my mind too. I was going to kiss her and take it slow and it was just going to be so perfect. I really wish that me waking her up right now was the aftermath…us basking in some amazing afterglow from having the most amazing sex last night. I wish it wasn't under the pretense that I'm going to go wake up a very cranky four year old and take her to the hospital. "Jo, wake up…wake up."

"No." She wrinkles her eyebrows and turns her head to the other side. "Go away…" She must not like being woken up. With a smirk on my face, I put my hand on top of her fist and rub it softly. She snatches her hand away from me and turns completely away. "Stop it." I just move on to start messing with her hair since she won't let me play with her hand. She was convinced that I was going to be angry with her for what happened last night. While there was a small part of me that was kind of jealous that she could calm Lyla down when I couldn't, I wasn't at all mad. It wasn't her fault that Lyla preferred her over me and oddly enough, it didn't make me feel like a bad father. It made me realize that even though my daughter is taking steps towards becoming more grown up, she's actually still a baby and babies want their mommies when they're not feeling well. That's just the way it is. She meant no disrespect towards me and Lyla surely didn't mean any harm by it. She just needed a mother's touch and while she likes to cuddle with me and stuff, I don't have a mother's touch. I can spend the rest of my life being jealous of Jo but there's no point in that because as Lyla is a little girl, there's always going to be some stuff that I don't understand when it comes to her. I realize that as long as Jo is around, there will be certain instances where Lyla would rather have Jo than me. I took offense to it for about two seconds before it just clicked for me.

I never mentioned it to Jo, because I didn't know if it would make her want to "step away" again, but last night wasn't the first time I heard Lyla refer to Jo as "mommy", which is why I wasn't too surprised by it. I was surprised that Lyla had the gall to call her that to her face, but I wasn't surprised that she actually said it. She called Jo "mama" the other day and I was more shocked then than I was last night. I've just had adequate time to adjust to the fact that Lyla and Jo's relationship is mother-daughter. I would've liked for it to have been friendly for just a little while longer, just so I had ample time to know if Jo's going to be in it for the long run or not but ultimately, I can't change how Lyla feels about Jo. Personally, I don't think Jo's going anywhere. I think we're going to be together for a while but I don't know that for sure and I would've liked for there to have been more time before Lyla got so comfortable with her to think of her as her mother because anything could happen.

"Fine…I'll leave you here and take Lyla to the doctor by myself." She's still asleep, but I lean forward and put my wet lips against her dry ones anyway. Jo has the most perfect lips. They're so full and big. They're heart shaped…if the tip of a heart was actually rounded to a soft point, that is. And I'm a sucker for the beauty mark by her mouth. I think that beauty mark is the sexiest thing. I rub my thumb across it and kiss her lips once more. "You can sleep." Her eyelashes flutter as she opens her eyes and immediately, a smile spreads across her face. "That's what I thought…now get up." I swipe her hair out of her face.

"I'm up…I'm up." She sighs and rubs her eyes. "…I'm gonna walk down my house." She yawns really wide. "I need to brush my teeth and my toothbrush is down there. I'll be back before you guys leave, I promise." She slowly sits up, yawns again and looks around.

"I bought you a toothbrush." I don't want to sound creepy so I mumble it, but it's the truth. I bought her a toothbrush a couple days ago…and I picked up the shampoo and conditioner she uses. "You spend so much time here and you never bring a toothbrush…and you're always talking about how you need to wash your hair when you shower here…so I just bought you a toothbrush and shampoo and conditioner." I shrug my shoulders like it's no big deal. "Just so you have your own stuff when you come sleep here." I hear her whisper the word "Thanks". I just nod my head. "…It's the red one hanging up in the caddy on the wall of the bathroom."

"Alrighty then." She cracks a half-smile. "I would kiss you but…morning breath." She slips the covers off of her and swings her legs over the side of the bed so she can get out of it. I watch her as she gets up though because I noticed she was moving a little slow. Sure enough, she's slow standing up. I would massage her but she probably wouldn't let me so I just let her go. I need to go wake Lyla up anyway. I watch as Jo disappears into my bathroom and I pick myself up out of the bed once she's officially gone. I quietly stalk down the hall to the pink door and open it up.

Lyla's still sleeping very peacefully in her bed, buried underneath the covers. I walk over to her bed and kneel down so I can wake her up gently, without making her too crabby. Lyla's usually very pleasant. She has her days when she's downright ornery and mischievous but she's never, ever, ever in a bad mood. She's always fairly happy-go-lucky. She's not cranky and crabby like most kids her age; she's genuinely a very sweet kid. But I have a feeling that she might be in a yucky mood when I wake her up since she's not feeling well and all. Last night was the first time in her entire four years of life that I've ever seen her in such a foul mood. Even as a baby, she wasn't much of a grouch. "Ly…" I shake her very gently. "Ly, wake up." She turns her head a little bit and takes a big breath. When she turns her head, I notice a few smeared, red lines streaking across the face of Sleeping Beauty on her pillowcase. I positioned her last night specifically so I could see if any discharge was draining from her ear this morning but I wasn't expecting to see blood. She's not bleeding profusely, it's just a little bit of blood but it's still blood nonetheless. I squint to see if I can see any tissue on her pillow. It looks like it's just blood, no tissue which is good. I grab her earlobe and take a look inside her canal. There's a little bit of dried blood around the inside. It could just be a very nasty infection or it could be something way worse. I don't know what it could be without looking inside it with a scope. I've seen infections bleed. It's rare, but it can happen. "Wake up, sweetheart." I shake her again.

She opens up her eyes and as soon as she does, her eyebrows wrinkle and the whining starts. "Mmmmm!" She sits up in her bed, disoriented and clearly confused. She puts her hand up to her ear and I grab it before she can pull at it again. When I grab her hand, she starts full out crying but it's not at all like it was last night. This cry is gentler, more babyish and whiny. She's in some serious pain. She sounds miserable. She puts her hand up to her ear and just holds it, putting her head down like she really can't take being in this much pain. "I go night night…" She tries to lay back down but I stop her. "Night night…"

"No…no night night, Ly. Daddy's gonna take you to the doctor's…I'm gonna make your ear stop hurting. I promise." I pick her up and immediately, her head goes to my chest. She's still crying but it's more of a soft cry, a whimper even. "Let's get some clothes on…" I carry her to my bedroom so I can grab some clothes. I can't wait to put her out of her misery because if I have to sit here for another moment and see my baby girl in this much pain…

I might start crying myself.

 **X X X**

"You wanna push the button?" I twist to my side and lean down towards the floor just in case she wants to push the button. She shakes her head and just keeps it down on my shoulder. I already knew she wasn't going to want to push the button but I've been trying everything to get her to cheer up. I don't like seeing her so miserable and lethargic. She's not even interested in the things she's usually interested in when she comes here. She usually likes to pet the purple hippo near the entrance and she didn't even want to do that. She usually likes to mess with the flamingo water fountain and she didn't want to. She doesn't even want to push the elevator button. She's REALLY not feeling well. I kind of knew she wasn't going to want to do anything though. She didn't even want to hold her head up long enough to put clothes on today. Somehow, Jo managed to put grey sweatpants on her, socks, white sneakers and a grey and pink t-shirt. We didn't bother with her hair. I tried to feed her some pancake for breakfast but she wouldn't eat it. All she wants to do is lay on either my shoulder or Jo's shoulder. She's not crying anymore though, that's a plus. I push the button that'll take us up to my surgical floor and rub her back.

Normally, I'd be giving Jo the royal tour of my job but I don't really have time for that today. My main concern is getting Lyla to Arizona. "…So you work here?" Jo nudges me with her elbow softly and looks around the elevator as if it's not just a pink elevator with green flooring and yellow ceilings. "It's a nice place." She mutters. She's wearing the same clothes she wore on our date yesterday and I feel kind of bad for that. She was going to go home and change her clothes while I tried to feed Lyla something for breakfast but Lyla refused to eat and I didn't want to waste any more time getting her here to the hospital, so Jo just threw on the clothes she had on yesterday. The elevator doors open up and spit us out on the usual kid-friendly, purple floors with lime green walls and a big alligator statue holding a sign that says "Welcome to Pediatric Surgery". I secure Lyla in my arms and step off. Jo follows close beside me, still looking around and giving herself the tour. "…Your floor?" I nod my head and approach the nurses' station.

I keep my eyes peeled for Stacy but if I'm being honest, I don't really care about her. I honestly think they transferred her off the surgical floor but I'm not sure. I haven't ran into her since the incident where she hit me but then again, we could just be working opposite shifts. I still look out for her but I never do see her and I could care less. I approach a friendly face, Michelle, and stand at the station. "Hey Michelle." I'm glad to see her, as opposed to someone else. She already knows what I'm here for and that'll make my visit that much quicker. She's the only nurse at the station and I thank the heavens for that as well. I'm trying to remain focused on Lyla and Lyla only today but I imagine that would be a lot harder if there were all the women staring at me as usual, with Jo standing right here. If I had my usual fanclub of women, I would then have to worry about Jo's feelings and all I'm trying to do is worry about Lyla today. "Is Arizona in surgery?" Michelle pokes her lip out in sympathy for Lyla and shakes her head to answer me. She was there to witness the carnage from last night so she knows how much of a blessing it is to have her silent. "She's not? Great. Can you page her for me? Page her 911."

"Of course." Michelle picks up a little device the nurses use for paging purposes. "Is she feeling any better?" She puts the device down once she pages Arizona for me and leans across the counter to get a closer look at Lyla. I shake my head and sigh. I turn my head and look at Ly to make sure she's still alright. Her face is turned in, facing my neck and she's sucking her thumb. She's not sleeping though. I gave her some Tylenol before we left and I guess that's helping her with the pain. Michelle puts her hand on her back. "Poor baby…it happened so suddenly too." She starts rubbing Lyla. "Your father and I were just playing with her on the couch…she was laughing and all of a sudden, she was screaming."

"I think it's just a nasty infection but I can't tell for sure without the proper equipment. She'll be alright though…" I rest my cheek against Lyla's head and rub her back in a circle.

"Alex?!" Arizona calls my name as she comes back from the double doors. Her short blonde hair is tied back in a ponytail, she has on her usual navy blue scrubs and her ice blue eyes are wide with worry. "What are you doing here?! Hunt told me you called off…are you here for her?! You paged me 911?" She skates over to me in her wheely sneakers and stops once she's a few feet away. "What's going on?"

"She's down bad, Zone…you gotta help her." I turn towards her and start relinquishing custody of Lyla to her. "Last night, she came down with an ear infection and she was screaming…she was screaming about it and trying to pull her ear off. She was really trying to pull her ear off of her head, Arizona. And it's been discharging blood. I think it's an infection but I don't know. I don't have a scope at home to look in it…just help her, please. She's in a lot of pain and I don't know what to do." She takes Lyla off of me and of course, Ly starts crying once she's away from me but I really need Arizona to take her. Arizona's great with kids. "…I don't know if it's surgical but…" Arizona holds Lyla like I was but Lyla's crying really hard and reaching for me. "Look…Arizona, you're the only one I trust with my kid…"

"Of course." She nods her head. "I'll do everything I can." She completely ignores the fact that Lyla's crying and reaching for me and just starts rubbing her back. "I'm gonna get her a room and do an exam on the ear. If it's just an infection, I'll give her oral antibiotics, ear drops, intravenous antibiotics and a little bit of morphine for the pain. If the ear was draining blood, the infection is probably too deep to treat it with just one antibiotic so I'd rather treat it with three and give her three times the chance of fast recovery." I nod my head. "Hey princess…you wanna go see my special laboratory? I'm gonna put some magic in your ear and make it feel all better, what do you say?" Lyla's still a little distraught. "Daddy can come too, that's fine." She's trying anything to console her. Her eyes wander though, and she clears her throat loud.

"Oh…yeah." I turn towards Jo, who's standing behind me and still looking around the floor. "Arizona, this is Jo…my girlfriend." I motion towards Jo and when she hears her name, she snaps out of the trance that the colorful surgical floor put her in and returns back to reality. "Jo, this is Arizona. My boss and one of my best friends." Arizona smiles but it's not the usual "nice to meet you" smile. She's giving me one of her "I approve" smiles. Jo shakes her hand politely and looks around some more.

"I'm gonna take her into exam room three, come on." Arizona motions for us to follow her as she carries Lyla down the purple hallway. I grab Jo's hand and pull her along.

 **X X X**

"Where are these scratches from, Alex?" She asks me as she gently pulls Lyla's ear downward to get a good look at the scratches on her ear and on her head. Lyla didn't want to sit up on the exam table alone, so Jo got up there with her and she held her. Lyla's sitting on Jo's lap with her head on Jo's chest and she's sucking her thumb calmly while Arizona examines her. I was going to be the one to hold Lyla during the exam but I have to fill out her paperwork so I couldn't. Jo's doing a good job of holding her, caressing her, kissing her and keeping her calm. "They look pretty fresh and pretty deep…are they from her pulling?" I mumble "mhm" as I jot down Lyla's social security number. "She must've been in a significant amount of pain to feel like she had to claw her own ear off." She grabs her scope and turns on the light. "I've never seen a four year old that tried to pull her own ear off." Before she puts the scope in Lyla's ear, she looks around it. "The ear is swollen…did you notice that?" I nod my head and keep writing. "Her lobe is swollen and I see some blood in the canal…but the swelling could be from her agitating it…" She puts her fingers on the part of Lyla's head behind her ear. "…It's swollen back here too. Something's definitely going on." She turns the light on the scope on and puts it to Lyla's ear but Lyla only lets her get the tip to her earlobe before she freaks.

"Noooo!" She turns her head away and starts crying again. "No no…" Jo starts bouncing her knee up and down to calm her.

"I'm just gonna look in your ear, princess…okay?" Arizona stops with the scope until she's calm because if Lyla is freaking while she's sticking the pointy end of the scope in her ear, she WILL hurt her. "This is the magic wand that I'm gonna use to put the magic in your ear. See that light?" She shows Lyla the scope. "That light is gonna turn red when I know that I can put the magic in your ear. So you have to be really still for me." Lyla holds onto Jo for dear life and sits very still. Arizona puts the scope in her ear and looks around. "I'm gonna put the magic in your ear right now, princess…you're gonna feel a little puff, okay?" Lyla starts whining. The puff is from the scope. She's gonna push this button that blows air into her ear to test the movement of her eardrum. "1….2….3." She pushes the button and I can tell when she air goes in because Lyla starts screaming. "All done!"

"All done sweetie." Jo kisses her forehead and starts swaying back and forth with her. "You have magic in your ear now and you were so brave. You were so brave, just like a big girl."

Arizona puts the scope back down and walks over to me as I'm filling out paperwork. "She's running a fever. Slight one, but a fever nonetheless, you said she had an infection not too long ago…and her eardrum is completely flat. It didn't move at all when I blew the air in. I see some swelling in the inner ear and around the mastoid bone but I'm not sure if it's mastoiditis just yet. I'm gonna go ahead and admit her so we can run some tests. I'll get Nurse Jackie in here to get you guys a residential room…she's gonna be here overnight. I'm gonna order a CT, bloodwork and a spinal…I wanna be sure about this diagnosis. I'll put a rush on her labs and if her results come back positive, I'll try to have her into surgery by tonight." She writes something on Lyla's chart. "Her last infection probably didn't heal right and I imagine you did a lot of swimming at Disney World, yeah?" I nod. "I'm thinking the infection got deep into her mastoid bone. I'll get her some more Tylenol for the pain."

I sigh. "Surgery? Really?"

"If it's really mastoiditis, yeah. Surgery is necessary. After her results, I'll call Dr. Avery so he can run through the procedure. It's minimal…you know that, Alex."

"He's gonna cut off her EAR, Arizona. Is that really necessary?" I stand up. Mastoiditis isn't a big deal but it does require a surgery that's going to require her to be in here for a couple days. They cut the ear off, cut out a piece of her skull and go in to drain fluid and relieve the swelling off the bone back there. I've seen the procedure done three times before and it's extremely painful. I just look at my poor daughter. "…Do whatever you gotta do to make her better, I guess."

"It's gonna be alright, Alex." Arizona rubs my shoulder and gives me a slight hug. She goes back over to Lyla. "So princess, what do you think about having a sleepover here for the night? Daddy can feed you lots of ice cream and you can watch lots of TV, okay?" She rubs Lyla's leg. "But first, we're gonna go get you a nice princess gown and a pretty princess bracelet, okay?" She tries to make it sound way more pleasant than it's going to be. That's the beauty about Pediatrics though. You get to use your imagination and make the scary stuff…less scary. "I'll get Jackie in here right away." Arizona nods and disappears out of the exam room.

I put my head against the wall and sigh. I shouldn't have taken her swimming at Disney. But I really thought her infection was gone by then. I gave her Amoxicillin myself and she was feeling better. Her infection was gone…I really thought it was gone. And now she's going to need surgery? Surgery where they cut her ear off? I might as well just hang up my stethoscope, because I'm a horrible doctor. I couldn't tell that my wife had cancer and I couldn't tell that my daughter's simple ear infection wasn't gone. I should just quit being a doctor. "…Alex." Jo calls me. I just keep my head against the wall. I'm so incredibly pissed off with myself. "Alex." She calls me again and I just ignore her. "Alex, stop it. Stop it, okay? Stop it. She's going to be okay and there's no way you could've known…don't do this to yourself. I'm not gonna let you." It's crazy how she just knew what I was thinking. Probably because I expressed my concerns before, about Jenna. "Stop it, okay? Stop…come here." I shake my head. "I'm not going to let you blame yourself. It's not your fault…come here." I sigh and just go over to see what she wants. She puts her hand on my shoulder and rubs. "She's going to be fine. I'm here for you though…alright? For as long as you need me to be, I'm here for you."

It's also crazy how she knew just what to say…


	43. Always There

It's been kind of neat to see where Alex goes every time he leaves the house and doesn't come back for eight hours or so. It's a really nice hospital and it seems like a fun place to work. Everything is so brightly colored and kid friendly and just downright fun. I knew he worked in a children's hospital but I wasn't expecting it to be this cool because it's a hospital after all. I was expecting some place that still looked like the scariness of a regular hospital, the only difference being that they treat children and only children. This place looks more like a daycare facility than a hospital and for some reason, I find that to be really cool. If I worked here, I'd love coming to work every day. All the members of the staff seem to be kid friendly too, even the nurses. I'm beginning to wonder if they have to go through some kind of special training to learn how to deal with small children because everything seems so well thought out and put together. Everyone just naturally talks about magic and princesses and fairy godmothers. They do a really good job of making it seem like the kids are here to have fun, rather than being here to be poked and prodded with needles. I'm impressed, to say the least. It's kind of surreal to think that Alex—my Alex—does this every day. He probably tells little girls that there's fairy princesses in their medicine bags and things like that. He amazes me every single day but coming here was just the icing on the cake. I always knew that my boyfriend was an amazing man but seeing what he does every day really blows my mind.

Speaking of Alex, I'm starting to miss him a little bit. He left about 45 minutes ago, after the nurse brought us up to the room that Lyla's going to be spending the night in tonight. The new room has a comfortable, cushioned bed with pink sheets and purple blankets. The walls are painted yellow and they have butterflies and princess crown decals plastered about. There's a flat screen TV mounted to the wall and a carpeted area in the corner of the room that holds some blocks and other little toys. To my right, next to the window, there's a door that leads into our own private bathroom. It was already pretty clear that this is a nice hospital but when the nurse brought us up here to this room, I was surprised all over again at how nice it was. Anyway, Alex left me in charge of Lyla until he gets back. He wasn't expecting to have to spend the night here so he had to go home and grab a few things. I think the only reason he told me to stay with Lyla is because I don't know how to get back home from here. I would've gone to his house myself and grabbed whatever he needed me to, just so he could've been the one to stay here with her but I have no idea how to get back to Millerton from Pensacola so I had to be the one to stay. He should be back soon though. He went home to grab some of Lyla's things and I gave him the key to my house so he could run in and grab my cell phone charger.

Alex left soon after they showed us to the room she'll be staying in because he wanted to be back before her test results came back. He left pretty quickly, so it's been up to me to take care of her and while I'm flattered that he trusted me enough to take care of her while he's gone, it's been kind of challenging to get her to stop crying long enough to allow me to do certain things and I'm just hoping he's back before they actually have to start giving her shots and stuff. She's already whining and all I've had to do was put a gown on her and let the nurse put a bracelet on her. She's been pretty tame for the last ten minutes or so, sitting on my lap and watching Bubble Guppies but I suspect that her calm demeanor is going to change here in a minute because the blonde doctor came back in the room a few minutes ago and she had needles in tow. I continue to sway back and forth with her in my arms to keep her calm. Her head is in the middle of my chest, she's sucking her thumb and watching TV quite contentedly. The nurse gave her some more Tylenol for the pain a little while ago and she's been pretty pleasant since.

"So your daddy tells me that you went to Disney World, Miss Lyla…" The blonde doctor that's been with us every step of the way pulls a pair of purple gloves on her hands as she begins to talk to Lyla. Lyla takes her thumb out of her mouth and turns her head to look at the doctor. She nods her head and puts her slobbery hand down on my arm to adjust her position on my lap. I think she's about to stick Lyla with some kind of needle, so I turn the TV off just because it's a little distracting. I put my arm back around her waist once I'm done turning the TV off and hold her still. "You went to Disney World? That's so cool. Can you tell me what your favorite part was? Because I have a little girl too…" She tears open a small packet and pulls out an alcohol pad. "And I think we're gonna take her to Disney World pretty soon. So you have to tell me where I should take her. What was your favorite part?" Lyla's eyes wander to the alcohol pad. "I'm just gonna wipe this on your arm. It's gonna be a little cold but all I'm doing is cleaning your arm up." She rubs the pad in a circle on Lyla's forearm. "So what was your favorite part?"

"Um…I get a makeover fwom Cinnawella's Faiwy Godmother. I had makeup on and my hair was pwetty and I weared a dwess." She's right back to her pleasant, adorable self. This morning and last night were a bit disastrous because she was in pain but once they gave her the heavy dose of Tylenol and her pain subsided, she went right back to her normal self. She's in good spirits. "And it was so fun." The doctor starts tying a pink band around Lyla's arm and that's when I know that she's about to draw some of her blood. "…What that?" She looks down at the band. "Another bwacelet?"

"Nope, not a bracelet." The doctor ties the band around her arm pretty tight. "I have a butterfly here. And the butterfly is about to start flying around but I want the butterfly to land on your arm and give you a butterfly kiss. This thing is gonna help tell the butterfly to land on your arm. Because butterflies like bright colors and if the butterfly sees a bright color on your arm, it'll land there and give you a kiss. Doesn't that sound fun?" Lyla nods her head and keeps staring at the pink thing. I press my lips to her hair and give her a kiss. "A princess makeover sounds like so much fun. I might have to take my daughter to get one of those too." She tears open the package that the needle is in. The needle has two blue "wings" and a very thin point. She wipes Lyla's arm off again. "Who's your favorite princess?"

"Ewlsa." Lyla takes a look at the needle but she's fixated on the blue wings of it and not the needle part. I don't think she realizes that it's a needle. "I saw her too. Her and Anna." The doctor starts making the needle "fly" around, which makes me smile. I think it's really neat how they don't just up and stick the kids with needles. I like how they try to make it seem fun. Lyla watches the needle with sheer fascination in her eyes.

"I like Queen Elsa too. I like her song 'Let It Go.' Do you like that song?" She's still making the needle circle around but I can tell that she's looking for a good access point to draw her blood and by making the needle "fly", she's stalling. Lyla nods her head and continues to trace the butterfly with her eyes. "Sing it with me then. Let it go….Let it go…" I think she found a good access point because she starts bringing the needle closer to her.

"Can't hold back anymore…" Lyla starts to sing as she watches the needle. "Let it go…Let it go…Turn around…slam the door." I watch as the doctor rests the needle on Lyla's forearm and blood starts seeping out into the tube. "Here I stand….here I stand…the cold never bothered me anyway…" To my surprise, she never stops singing once the needle is underneath her skin. "That's my favite pawt of the moobie." She looks away from the blood coming out of her arm and up at the doctor. "When her builded the cassle… I fink her is so pwetty. I wish I be Ewlsa and libb in her ice cassle."

"You wanna live in the ice castle? But don't you think it'd be a little bit cold?" The doctor checks the vial to see that it's all the way filled up with Lyla's blood. She gently pulls the needle out of her arm and straps a purple Band-Aid over it. She unties the band and takes off her gloves. "You did really good with the butterfly kisses. "Your daddy and his girlfriend should be so proud." She looks at me with a smile and I just smile, toothlessly back at her. Alex mentioned that she's her boss and I think she's probably a really cool boss. When I read her nametag earlier, it said something about how she's the head of surgery so I guess she must really like Alex. Being the head of surgery, I imagine she's a very busy individual but she's taking the time out of her day to do all of Lyla's tests herself. She must really like Alex. "I'm all done in here for now." She starts talking to me instead of Lyla so I perk up and listen. "I'm gonna take this blood to the lab so they can run it and in about…ten or fifteen minutes, someone from Radiology will be in to prep her for her CT. She's a little fidgety so I'm gonna go ahead and order for her to be sedated for the scan."

"Like…under anesthesia? Are you going to put her to sleep?" I brush my fingers over the bandage on her arm and hold her like she's a baby. Her head is resting on my forearm and my arms are supporting her body while she lays in them. I'm all for treating Lyla like a big girl and making sure she knows that she's not a baby anymore, but she's sick and I think sickness nullifies everything and permits me to baby her. I turn the TV back on so she can focus on that and not the scariness that the doctor's talking about. "Should I prepare her for anesthesia?"

"No, we're not going to put her to sleep." She stands next to the bed and looks at me like I'm really Lyla's mother. It's just a look that you get. Sometimes when people know that you're nothing but a family friend or an acquaintance, they'll look at you strange or they'll give you the runaround because in truth, it's not your business if you're not blood related to the person. But she's looking at me like I'm actually somebody to Lyla; somebody that she needs to explain things to. "She's a little squirmy and we need her to lie perfectly still for the scan. But the scan will only last 10-20 minutes so there's no reason to put her under anesthesia for such a short amount of time. What's gonna happen is in a few minutes, a nurse is going to come in and start an IV and we're gonna give her some intravenous fluids that'll calm her down and make her a little bit drowsy. She's not going to be put to sleep though." She touches Lyla's hair. "She might end up falling asleep but we're not going to medically put her to sleep."

"Okay." I sweep Lyla's hair out of her face and put my lips on her forehead. "You hear that, baby? They're gonna give you some medicine to make you feel better. It might make you a little sleepy but you wanna go night night anyway, don't you?" She nods her head and reaches her hand up so she can grab my ear. I tilt my head down a little to make it easier for her to grab it. She starts playing with it like she always does when she's tired. "You'll be sleep soon enough…but you gotta stay up for daddy. He's gonna want to hear about your butterfly kisses." She keeps one thumb in her mouth while she other one massages my earlobe. She's quietly watching TV and I'm rubbing her back.

"How long have you actually known Alex, Jo?" She stops talking to me as Lyla's doctor and now she's talking to me as Alex's friend. I look up from Lyla and at the doctor. She's pretty, if I do say so myself. She has pretty pale blue eyes and her blonde hair is bouncy and lively. She just has a certain aurora about her that makes me feel comfortable. I can see why she'd be a pediatrician because she's just so bright and happy. "You don't have to give me the scaredy pants look, I'm not trying to butt in your relationship." She laughs very softly before she starts talking again. "I'm just saying…I've been friends with Alex for a very long time and I've never seen him entrust someone with his daughter the way he does with you. He doesn't even bring her around here much…So I was just wondering what made you so different. Because you _are._ You _are_ different…that's not hard to see."

"Um…" I hope she means different in a good way. "I've known Alex for almost three months. And…I guess you could say we're pretty serious. But it started out as me just being friends with her, so I guess that's why he trusts me with her." I shrug my shoulders like it's no big deal when in reality, it is. It is a pretty big deal that he trusts me enough to stay with her in the hospital while he heads home. He told me last night that he basically viewed me as Lyla's mother but I just thought it was the way he thought about me. I thought it was just a label, really. Kind of like how we thought about each other before we even started dating. Like he said last night, we've been romantically involved since the 4th of July and I thought that him viewing me as Lyla's mother. It's like before we got together, I viewed Alex as my love interest but we never actually got together and we never actually acted on it. I thought him viewing me as Lyla's mother was the same thing; just a way he thought of me and not necessarily something he'd take action towards. Yet, I'm sitting down in her hospital bed with her while she watches TV and he's all the way back in Millerton. This is such a motherly thing to do and that alone makes me nervous. I mean, I always kind of thought that I would make a good mother for Lyla. I know how to toilet train her, put her to bed, give her a bath, all that good stuff. I know how to do all of that. But I don't really think I was ever truly ready for the possibility of me actually being her stand-in mother. Sure, it's easy for me to just sit here and hold her while they stick her with needles and such but what if I'm not cut out for anything else? Taking on a child is a pretty big responsibility and as her substitute mother, I assume that I'm expected to help Alex actually…raise her. I don't know if I can do that. "…Is that different in a good way?" I muster up the courage to ask her. "Because I'm still learning about Alex and I don't possess the ability to know if different is good or not just yet…"

"Different is very good." She reassures me with a smile that shows off her perfectly aligned, sparkling white teeth. She puts her hand on her hip and shifts her weight off her front leg as if she's settling in to talk to me for a while. "Different is allowing you to hold his daughter while she's being admitted to the hospital. Different is taking three months to even mention you to me." I raise my eyebrows in shock. "Like I said…I've known Alex for a while and I know that he wouldn't introduce someone as his girlfriend unless he was particularly serious about that someone." She picks up the pink chart she's been toting around to write all of Lyla's information down in. "So yeah…different's good." She winks at me and hearing someone that's been Alex's friend for years say that he's serious about me really makes me feel a little bit better about everything. "I'm gonna go put her bloodwork in now. Someone will be in to prep her very shortly."

"Thank you Dr. Robbins." I look down at Lyla to make sure she's not asleep as Dr. Robbins leaves out of the room. Lyla's still watching TV but I can tell that she's about to fall asleep any minute if I let her. "Are you about to fall asleep baby?" She nods her head. "Don't fall asleep. Daddy's coming back and he's gonna want to hear all about the butterfly that kissed you. So you gotta stay awake." She takes her hand off of my ear and puts it on my cheek. "What's your hand on my cheek for?" She says nothing. She's way too busy paying attention to this episode of Bubble Guppies. "Get your hand off my cheek." I shake my head to move her hand and get her attention but she's still staring at the TV. "Move your hand." She puts her hand over my mouth this time and I playfully gasp. "Are you telling me to shut up?" I talk even though her hand is over my mouth. "Is this you telling me to shut up?" She nods her head. "Don't you tell me to shut up!" I poke her stomach, which makes her giggle. "Are you crazy? Telling me to shut up?" I start tickling her and she's laughing for the first time all day.

I'm glad I could make her smile.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I really wish there weren't laws and rules that make it preventable for me to do procedures on Lyla. I'd love nothing more than to draw her blood myself, give her the spinal myself and run the CT myself too. I'd feel better about having people stick her with needles like she's a pincushion and I know Lyla would feel better about it too. But there are strict rules that prevent me from running tests on my own kid and I hate it. I hate all of this. I hate that Lyla's sick, I hate that Lyla needs surgery and I hate that I can't do anything about it. I hate this whole thing. I guess I was too lucky and something had to knock me down a few pegs. I come here every day and deal with everyone else's sick kids and I was so blessed to be able to come home to my perfectly healthy child every day. I was too lucky and now my own child is one of those sick kids. Mastoiditis isn't very serious like some cases that I see from a day to day basis, but the surgery for it is pretty barbaric. They cut off the ear, take a piece of the skull out and get access to the mastoid bone behind the ear. It's a painful, three hour procedure and the recovery is awful. I know it could be worse. She could have a heart condition or cancer but the thing is…I don't want there to be anything wrong with her. I want her to be my beautiful, healthy little Lyla. I can't deal with this. I promised Jenna I'd take care of her and she ends up with a painful bone infection because I didn't make sure her ear infection was totally gone. Some dad, right?

I readjust the grip on the bag I have in my hand and carry it down the green hallway until I make it to room 202. There are perks to having your child being admitted to the hospital you work at. Like for example, everyone's been treating Lyla like she's their own child. She's been getting the best care, the fastest care and we were even given a suite style room. It makes me feel a little bit better to know the inner workings of this hospital and honestly, I trust these people with my daughter. I know each and every doctor that's going to be working on her and they're all very good. I packed some things that'll hopefully make Lyla feel a little better. I brought her a pair of pajamas that they'll let me put on her a little later, Lionel the lion, her princess blanket, a book and a pair of headphones so she can listen to some music on my phone. I had to stop at Jo's house to get her cell phone charger and I grabbed my charger too. I don't know how far along with Lyla's tests they've gotten but if I had to guess, I'd say they probably at least got to draw her blood. They're usually pretty quick with all the testing around here.

I make it to her room and open up the door. Around here, we take extra precautions for privacy since we're dealing with children, so in addition to doors that shut, we have curtains to close off the rooms too. I quietly shut the door behind me just in case Lyla's asleep but before I pull back the yellow curtain that closes off the door from the actual room, I decide to just listen. Lyla's laughing hysterically and I hear Jo fake yelling at her. If she got my daughter to laugh when she's been feeling like crap all day, I'll be even more amazed by her than I already am. Careful not to interrupt the moment, I peel the curtain back just enough to allow myself to see through it. Lyla's laying on Jo's lap, laughing so hard that her face is red and Jo's tickling her sides, laughing too. "You don't tell me to shut up!" Jo is tickling her and really getting a kick out of making her laugh too. "Tell me you're sorry and I'll put the tickle monster away…tell me you're sorry."

"Sowwy!" Lyla throws her head back over Jo's arm and continues to laugh her heart out even though Jo stopped tickling her after she said sorry. My lips involuntarily pull up into a smile as I watch the two of them interact. I won't lie…when they first told me that Lyla had to be admitted and I realized that I had to go home and grab some of her stuff, I was nervous to leave her with Jo. I would've rather given Jo my keys and let her take my car home so she could grab the stuff herself, but she doesn't know her way around Florida well enough to go so I was left with no choice. I honestly thought I had made the wrong decision by leaving Lyla with her. I didn't think she was going to know how to comfort Lyla, keep her calm…I trusted her but I didn't think I made the right decision. Well, as I stand here behind this curtain, watching her make my daughter laugh and smile even though she's facing a three hour surgery for a bone infection, I realize that my decision was the best one. I won't say it was the right one because truthfully, there's probably no right decision in a situation like this. But leaving her with Jo was the _best_ decision.

Jo grabs Lyla's hand and lifts it up, which allows me to see that she has a pink Band-Aid on her forearm. The positioning of the Band-Aid lets me know that they did indeed take her blood. Jo holds Lyla's hand gently and brings it up to her mouth. She holds Lyla's hand against her mouth, which makes Lyla pick her head up and turn it to look at her. "…What?" Jo takes her hand away from her mouth but keeps it in her grasp. Lyla's just looking at her like she doesn't quite know what to say but she's clearly in some degree of shock. It's kind of weird because I know exactly what my daughter is thinking and why she's looking at Jo that way. I know what she's thinking because when I saw Jo kiss her hand like that, I felt it too. For a split second, I kind of felt like I was looking at my wife again. It felt like I was looking at Jenna, watching her hold our daughter for comfort and kissing her hand just like a mother should. Jo and Lyla are still just looking at each other. Jo's honestly confused and while I know that Lyla isn't necessarily confused, I know that she just doesn't know how to verbalize what she's feeling. I could hardly put it into words myself and I'm 30. I bet it's 10xs tougher for a four year old to do it. "...Did you like that?" She asks her. Lyla's eyes are just still locked on hers, unchanging and unblinking. Nervously, Jo brings her hand back up to her mouth again and rests her lips on it for the second time.

If I continue looking at Jo, my vision will start to parallel. I'll start to see Jo's hair lengthen and darken. I'll start to see her eyes lighten to a green color, her weight fluctuate just a little and her face shape change. I'll start to see Jenna again. So I close my eyes and keep them closed for a few seconds. There's a piece of me that wants to fall to my knees and cry again, for the first time in a long time. Cry for the fact that I miss my wife dearly, cry for the fact that my daughter should have her mother in a scary situation like this and most of all, cry for the fact that I would somehow be able to handle all of this better if Jenna was here. And the other part of me wants to pull back the curtains and go into that room and just sit down while I watch Jo take care of my daughter in the way that her mother would've. I open my eyes back up, halfway expecting to see my wife cradling our daughter once again. I'm relieved to see that it's still Jo with her shoulder-length brunette hair and gorgeous light brown eyes. Lyla finally stopped looking at her like she didn't know what to say. Instead, she buried her face in Jo's chest and wrapped her free arm around her back while Jo's still kissing her hand.

I eventually find it within myself to pull the curtains back and officially enter the room. Jo looks up but Lyla doesn't. "…Hey." She greets me with a soft smile but returns her attention to my daughter. "Lyla look…daddy's here. I told you he was coming back." She nudges Lyla and leans forward so I can take her off of her. I put the bag down on the floor and pick Lyla up. "Dr. Robbins took some of her blood and she said that someone should be in pretty soon to get her ready for the CAT scan. Um…they're going to sedate her. They said that she's too fidgety so they're going to sedate her. And that's pretty much it." She starts sitting up. "Lyla…tell your daddy about the butterfly that visited you and me. Tell him how Dr. Robbins let a butterfly out to give you butterfly kisses."

"The butterfly landed on me, daddy." She lifts her arm up and shows me her bandage. She's most likely talking about the butterfly needle we use to take her blood. "Him gimme kisses but it didn't hurt. I didn't cwy and I was a big girl. Like mommy says…I'm a big girl." She's so proud of the fact that she didn't cry. "I singed Let It Go wiff the doctuh and the butterfly gimme a kiss and it was fun daddy. And mommy…mommy holded my hand."

"Did Jojo hold your hand?" I correct her. I thought I didn't care if she called Jo "mommy" but hearing her say it so comfortably when I just spent five minutes missing Jenna really struck a nerve. I don't want her calling Jo mommy after all. I don't like it too much. "Did you tell Jojo thank you?" I make it a point to say "Jojo" once more just in case she missed it the first time. Lyla nods her head, completely accepting of the fact that I corrected her. I look at Jo from the corner of her eye and I can see that she's not even looking at me, which makes it okay if I turn my head and analyze her body language. Jo's head is down and she's tracing the pink Paisley designs on the sheets of Lyla's bedding. I can't see her face so I can't tell how she truly feels about me correcting Lyla but her shoulders are drooped and I think that speaks volumes. "Jojo's a real good friend, isn't she?" Jo still doesn't budge when I say that. So maybe she understands why I'm so uncomfortable with it. Jo's very understanding.

"Her stay here too, daddy? Her sleepover too?" Lyla looks back at Jo. Her head is still down and she's still carefully tracing her index finger along the patterns. If I look close enough, I see a splotch on the bed…and another one fall from Jo's face. Is she crying? "Pease?"

"…If she wants to." I shrug. "Does she?" I ask, leaving the opportunity open. "…Jojo?" She finally stops tracing the designs on the sheet but she doesn't look up. The lapse of tracing lets me know that she's listening though. "Does Jojo want to stay at the hospital with us?"

"…She doesn't know." Jo climbs down off the bed, making it a point to keep her face turned away from me. "I'm gonna go to the bathroom…excuse me." Her voice is clearly cracking and shaky. She hurries behind the curtain and I hear the door shut behind her. I didn't mean to upset her. I really didn't mean to make her cry. I just don't think it's right for Lyla to be calling her that after all. It was bad judgment on my part and it's my fault for ever telling her that it was okay for her to start calling her that and I apologize for that. I apologize for giving her the opportunity to be more than Lyla's good friend and snatching it away but it's just a title and it shouldn't mean anything. Lyla can still continue to look at Jo as a motherly figure, that doesn't have to change. I just don't want the titles and the labels that come with it. It's a little too much for me. I just can't have my daughter walking around calling some other woman "mommy" when I'm not really over her mother just yet. I don't like it and to be honest, I don't think Jenna would like it either. Maybe someday, if Jo and I get married and she actually is Lyla's stepmother, it will be okay then but that's not the case just yet and I don't think it's appropriate. I didn't mean to make Jo cry though, I really didn't mean that.

Something tells me she just needed a moment away from me though. Because if she wanted to go to the bathroom, she could've gone to the one right here in the room with us.

 **X X X**

I unfold the princess blanket and spread it across her bed so it's ready for her when she comes back from CT. They just took her back a couple minutes ago and she bawled like a baby when she heard that I wasn't coming back with her. About ten minutes ago, Nurse Jackie came in here and gave Lyla an IV to make her drowsy enough to sit still during the CT scan and that made her cry a bit. There's just no pleasant way to explain to a child that they're going to have a giant needle stuck into their vein and there's no way to make that fun. So she got the IV and cried but within five minutes, she was so tired that she could barely keep her eyes open. Once the sedative kicked in, they put some dye into her IV so that they'll get a good picture of her bone during the scan and while they waited for that to set in, they wheeled her bed up to CT. She was still awake when they came to take her away and she freaked out when she found out that neither me nor Jo was coming with her. Jo came back a little while ago and when she came back, her eyes were puffy and her nose was red but she's been silent so I haven't pushed her to talk about it.

She's been sitting in the chair next to the bed, watching TV in silence. I want to talk to her though. "…I didn't mean to hurt your feelings." I sit down on the bed once the blanket is all set up and face Jo. "You know that, don't you?" I watch her chew on her lip. Her face is heartbreaking. She's hurt. I hurt her pretty bad and I feel awful about it but she has to understand that I thought I was okay with it but I'm not. "You know I didn't mean to hurt your feelings Jo. You know that…don't you?" She nods her head and keeps licking and chewing at her lips as if she's trying to fight off tears. "…Jo." I reach over and touch her shoulder and as soon as I do, tears stream down her cheeks. Jo's only cried like twice in front of me. She doesn't cry easily so when she does, I get the feeling that it's because something really bothered her or hurt her. I think I hurt her pretty damn bad. "Jo, please just listen to me…"

She closes her eyes and puts her hand over her mouth. "I'm…I'm listening." She can't even talk right. I feel so horrible. I'm mad enough to punch myself in the face right now. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt her feelings. I can tell by her body language and her demeanor that she's trying to pull herself together. She's blinking her eyes an awful lot and holding her breath so she won't hiccup. "I'm listening, Alex."

"I'm sorry, alright? I'm an ass…I am. But I…I'm not okay with that. I wasn't trying to downgrade you or make you feel like you're nothing I just wasn't comfortable with that at that point in time." I can't even find the words to explain to her what my reasoning behind correcting Lyla was. If I explain it to her, I think she'll be more upset with me than she is already. I can't tell her that the reason I don't want Lyla to call her "mommy" is because she reminded me of my wife. That would just destroy her. "I thought I was okay with it but I'm not and I'm sorry that it took me so long to realize it. I didn't want you to get so attached to it. I didn't mean to take that away from you. I'm so sorry." I rub her shoulder and I can see that even though she tried hard to keep the tears from falling, she lost. They're just pouring out of her eyes. "Please don't cry. I'm sorry, I…I'm just sorry. But you have to understand where I'm coming from."

"No, I do…I really do." Her voice has completely changed. It went up an entire pitch and it's thick. I can hardly tell what she's saying. "I understand. You have every right to do that. You have every right to correct her and retract your statement. It's okay if you're not comfortable with it. I'm not…I'm not comfortable either but…" She bawls her hands into fists and squeezes them so tight that her knuckles stick out and turn red. "It just hurt my feelings to hear you call me a friend again, that's all. It's okay Alex, it's…it's okay." She sniffs. "But there's a reason, isn't there? There's a reason you were comfortable with it yesterday and not comfortable with it today. What did I do? Please tell me what I did so I can try to…to not do it again. I just wanna know what I did, that's all. So please tell me." She still won't look at me but I don't think she's going to look at me until she stops crying altogether. "Just tell me. I can handle it."

"It's nothing you did, Jo. It's all me." I keep my hand on her shoulder. "I was just missing my wife today, alright? And hearing Lyla call you that struck a nerve and I realize that I can't have her calling you that until I'm completely over her. That's all it is. It's not fair if I let her run around calling you that when at any given moment, I can dislike it again. It's not fair to you. It's not fair to you if I'm okay with it one day, miss my wife the next and dislike it. So I just think it's best if I don't allow it at all. It's not fair to you. I'm not…I'm not over Jenna. That's all."

She wipes her face and actually looks at me this time. "What the hell, Alex?!" Her face is red, blotchy and soaking wet with tears. She's really upset with me. "So you turn this into an issue about your dead wife?! So I'm not allowed…I'm not allowed to progress on my relationship with you and with Lyla because you're not over your dead wife? You tell me that it's okay if your daughter calls me something…you're totally okay with it one minute and the next, you tell me no because you're not over your dead wife? Seriously?!" She's crying so hard but I'm finding it so hard to feel sympathy for her anymore. She's being selfish as hell right now. How does she not understand that? How is she turning this into something about herself?

"Now you're being selfish. How do you expect me to just snap my fingers and get over her?! Jo, I was with her, in love with her for FIFTEEN years. FIFTEEN years, Jo…and you expect me to wave some magic wand and magically throw that away for someone I've known for three months? It's been eight months and that's all. No, I'm not over it yet…and how dare you just expect me to—"

"I'M NOT SAYING THAT!" She stands up from the chair fast and throws her hands up. I think I might've been lucky for these last three months. I think I'm finally seeing Jo's explosive side that her mother warned me about. "I totally get if you're not over your wife but then what the HELL am I here for?! If you're not over her…if you're not willing to GET over her then what the HELL am I doing here with you?! What are you doing with a GIRLFRIEND?! You can't…you can't keep stringing me along at the expense of you…that's not fair. I'm ready to commit myself to you and you're not ready to commit yourself to me? Then why the fuck am I here, Alex? For you to be all about me one day and all about Jenna the next? If you're not ready to date then just say so. Don't string me along for the ride. Don't…don't make me fall for you if you know that you're not ready to fall for me back. I can't keep doing this onesided thing. How do you really feel about me, Alex? How do you feel about me? Because I can't do this. I can't sit around and be there for you when it's convenient. I can't sit here and hope that you don't miss Jenna today. If you're not over your wife, I get that. I really do…that's fine. I'm not a coldhearted, shallow bitch. I don't expect you to get over fifteen years in three months. I'm just asking you to try…I'm asking you not to compare me to her and just treat me like JO for once. Don't treat me like her replacement…because I can't compete with that."

"You mean to tell me when you look at me, you never see Mark?! Because that's bullshit Jo and you know it. You know damn well that's bullshit. I expect you to see Mark when you look at me sometimes. I expect you to think about him. I wouldn't ask you to stop thinking about him either because I'm not that damn selfish. So sit here and lie to me. Lie to me and tell me that you DON'T see Mark and everything you lost when you look at me." She's pissing me off beyond belief.

"…I don't." With tears streaming down her cheeks, she tilts her head and looks at me with the most honest eyes. "I'm not completely over Mark and I'll probably never be. There will always be a piece of my heart that belongs to him because people…real humans don't ever get over losing someone that they love. But I wouldn't jump into a relationship with someone unless I'm 100% ready to commit myself to that person. And Alex…when I look at you…" Her eyes well up with more tears. "When I look at you, I don't see Mark. I see Alex. And I don't see what I've lost. I see what I could gain. I see everything I have to live for and I see my reason for trying. I don't see something I could've had with Mark Warren…I see something I want to have with Alex Karev. And I really…" She blinks and the fresh tears stream down. "When you look at me, I really wish you would see Jo…and not Jenna's replacement. And I'm not knocking you for not being over her. I'm simply saying that I don't need to be with someone that's not willing to try putting me above their deceased spouse." She sniffs again and licks her lips. "I want you to see the same thing I see when I look at you." She whispers. "And you're not ready to do that."

I just keep my mouth shut. She really wants a future with me? She doesn't look at me and wish I were her husband sometimes? She's not with me just to get over him? She really cares for me? But I am ready to let Jenna go. I really am. It's just not easy to do it when I have a constant reminder of Jenna in four year old form that looks at me in the eye every day and calls me "Daddy". It's not that easy. "…Jo." I stand up too. I put both my hands on her shoulders but she snatches away. She shakes her head at me and walks out of the room, leaving the curtain open behind herself. I feel like a big jerk. I'm trying to juggle handling Jo and Lyla and I'm failing. I feel like a big ass though…and I think I might've blown it with Jo. Fuck. She was something I really wanted and I fucked everything up with her. I really thought there wasn't anything we couldn't get through and she just proved me wrong. She ran. Fuck. I sit down on the bed and sigh. I thought she was always going to be here for me.

This day can't get any worse.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I really wish I had another way home. I wish Alex didn't bring me here and I wish the buses ran down to Millerton but they don't. I want to go the hell home but that's not possible. Luckily for me though, this hospital has Wi-Fi and I'm freakishly good at giving people the silent treatment. I'd much rather be home but the fact that I'm not home isn't really an issue. I'm able to just sit out here in the waiting room, away from Alex and play on my phone. It's been a total of two hours and twelve minutes since we had our argument, but who's counting right? Anyway, I'm still not completely over what happened. I saw them wheel Lyla back from getting her CAT scan and I saw them bring in the equipment to get her spinal tap done too. I feel bad that I'm not in that room to support Lyla but I can't stand being around Alex without crying right now so sitting out here in the waiting room is the best thing for me at the moment. Besides, when they brought Lyla back from getting the scan, it looked like she had fallen asleep anyway. She won't be missing me.

Am I being selfish for wanting him to think of me first? I'm not beating up on him for not being over Jenna because in reality, no rational human being is going to get over their dead spouse this quickly. I understand that he's not over her, I swear I do. But he's not even willing to try to get over her. I can't keep standing in his dead wife's shadow. I just feel like…if he's not willing to 100% commit himself to me without being tied back to Jenna then he doesn't need me. He's not ready for a girlfriend and that's fine. It's alright that he's not ready for a girlfriend. I just wish he would've realized that he's not ready for a girlfriend before all of this. Before we went down on each other and before he made me start falling for him. I'm falling for him and now I can't put the brakes on and stop myself. I can't stop myself so I'm falling head over heels for him and he's not even ready to fall for me. I'm not mad at him for not being ready, I'm mad at him for not realizing that he wasn't ready sooner. I'm not totally and completely over Mark, but I'm 100% ready to devote myself to Alex without making him live in the shadow of my dead husband. He's not ready to give me the same respect, I guess. Dammit, Alex. He made me fall for him and now I can't stop.

I'm not even angry with him for deciding that he doesn't want Lyla to call me "mommy". Really, I'm fine with that and I was fine with it up until he told me the reason. Lyla's his daughter. He has the final say and if he doesn't want her to call me "mommy" then she just won't call me that. I don't mind him being uncomfortable with that and I'm totally understanding about how that could possibly be weird for him to hear, especially after only three months of knowing me. I'm fine with it, really it's okay. His reasoning just sucked. He basically told me that his daughter can't call me "mommy" because I remind him of his wife and he's not over his wife. I mean what the fuck? How is that fair to me? And maybe this makes me selfish, but I can't continue to be his girlfriend that wallows in his wife's shadow. Maybe this makes me selfish, but I don't think it's fair how I have to hope and wish and pray that today's not a day where he misses his wife. Because the days that he does miss his wife, his daughter isn't allowed to be more than my friend and I get bumped all the way back down to "Jojo". That's not fair to me. Does that make me selfish? I don't know.

I just really want to be as far away from him as I possibly can. Neither one of us officially said it, but it's pretty clear that we're over. I can't continue to live at the expense of his dead wife and he's not ready to let her go. There's not a snowball's chance in hell that this could work when we're both at odds with each other. When I'm constantly feeling like I'm overstepping some nonexistent boundaries that he refuses to set and when he refuses to look at me as anything more than Jenna's replacement, this isn't going to work. This is too confusing. He refuses to set boundaries with me but he feels weird when his daughter calls me mommy? I just don't understand all of this. I'm probably never going to understand, so to hell with this relationship. And since I've began to fall for him, I have to make a clean break until I'm over him. Doesn't mean that I'm going to stay away forever, just means that I'm going to stay away until I can be in his presence without shedding a tear. But right now, he's my only way home so this will start tomorrow or whenever we get back home.

"Lyla Karev…" I hear a woman say to the receptionist on the floor and I can't help but turn my head to see who it is. It's someone that I don't recognize. It's a woman with poofy blonde hair, blue jeans and a green sweater. "I'm her grandmother…just here to visit." If I'm not mistaken, I do remember Alex saying that both Jenna's parents are dead…so this must be his mother. I raise my eyebrows up and turn completely around to watch. The receptionist gives the woman a visitor's pass and my jaw drops. If that's Alex's mom… The woman starts walking in the direction of Lyla's room.

Whatever, it's not my issue. It's what he deserves. He's not on good terms with his mother last time I checked but oh well. It's not my problem. We're not boyfriend and girlfriend anymore and it's not my issue. Alex can deal with it his damn self. I turn back around and continue playing my game of Candy Crush.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I keep my head against Lyla's bed, stroking her hand while she sleeps. She got the CT and the spinal tap and now we're just waiting for her results to come back so they can take her into surgery. Dr. Avery will be in shortly to explain to me about the procedure and her recovery and stuff so I'm waiting for him. She was screaming and crying when they took her back for the CT but when she came back to the room, she was sleeping…probably from the sedative that they gave her. She slept through the spinal tap, which is good. Spinal taps are painful and I was glad that she slept through it. They put some numbing cream on her back so she wouldn't feel the numbing shot go into her back and she slept through the actual spinal tap. She's been a little trooper all day. She's definitely Jenna's daughter. She's tough. I stare at her too, deep in thought. I think me and Jo are over. I don't know where she went, but she hasn't been back in the room in two hours. I think she went to calm down but I was expecting her to come back already so maybe she caught a bus home.

I really hope we're not over though. I really like Jo and I know I haven't necessarily been fair to her but I still really like her and I hope we can work through this like we've worked through everything else. If we work through this and I end up getting my Jo back, I swear I'll try to look at her as something more than Jenna's replacement. Honestly, I didn't realize that I was looking at her as Jenna's replacement until she said something today…and it all fell into place. I guess I do find myself comparing Jo to Jenna more often than not and that's not fair and I swear I won't do it anymore if she takes me back. But if she doesn't take me back, I understand that too. I messed up pretty bad and this day can't get any worse.

I hear the door to Lyla's room open and that's when I pick my head up and stop thinking about my Jo. Since I was expecting Dr. Avery to be the one that walks through the curtains, it's needless to say that I'm immediately PISSED OFF when I see that it's this bitch in a green sweater. She's carrying a bag and a balloon and she looks like the goddamn devil. I immediately stand up. "Get out." I don't even let her speak first. She doesn't need to speak as far as I'm concerned. She has nothing to say to me. NOTHING. "Get out, now." I want to yell but I don't want to wake my daughter up so I just point to the door. "What are you doing here? WHO told you to come here?"

"Since you don't tell me anything, I had to find out from your father that my granddaughter is in the hospital." She puts the bag down on a counter and lets the balloon float up to the ceiling. "Some nasty ear infection?" She walks over to Lyla's bed. "You're a doctor, Alexander…how did you not know that her infection went that deep? I read all about her condition on the internet…"

"What part of get out don't you understand?" She moves to touch Lyla's hair but I swat her hand away. "Do not touch my daughter, do not breathe on my daughter, do not even move unless it's toward the door. Get out mom…now. Before I call security and tell them that there's a crazy bitch walking around in a green sweater snatching babies from the nursery." I don't even feel bad for being cold towards my mother anymore. My mother is the freaking devil. She can burn in hell for all I care. "Now get out. I don't need you here. I've got everything under control."

"Oh yeah right, Alex. You have everything under control? Is that why her ear infection got so bad that her bone got infected? Because you have everything under control?" She folds her arms across her chest. "…Alexander, just let me take her." She starts talking softly like she's trying to reason with me. "You can leave right now and I'll take everything from here. I have a bedroom for her and some toys….Alex just give her to me. Willingly sign your rights over. I don't want to do this to you…so just comply with me."

"Do what?" I ask through clenched teeth.

"…Look, Alex…" She runs her fingers through her hair and sighs. "I've got a lawyer. And we've been building a case for a while now but if you willingly comply and sign your rights over, we can settle this out of court. I just don't want to see Lyla get hurt anymore." She starts to talk to me in a motherly kind of voice and I'm not buying her bullshit. I'm not feeding into this. I'm gonna kill pop for telling her that Lyla's here. "If I take you to court, I will win. Between the bruises and the molestation and the fact that she's severely regressed in your care…add that to this infection that shouldn't have gotten this deep…" She shakes her head. "You're unfit and that's alright. So just sign over your rights and we can do this out of court. I don't want to take you to court Alex…you're my son. But I will."

"….You're gonna sue me? For custody of my daughter? Really?" I raise my eyebrow. "Really mom?"

"It's the right thing to do. I know you don't see that now, but it is. It's the right thing to do, Alex…I know it hurts but you'll see in the long run. Lyla will thrive with me."

"GET OUT OF THIS ROOM RIGHT NOW!" Something inside of me just…snaps. I don't even see my mother anymore. I see a grown man that needs his ass kicked. She's going to try to take Lyla away from me?! What the fuck?! She just stands in front of me with a smug look on her face and that sets me OFF. I dart across the room and grab her by her shoulders. "YOU'LL NEVER GET HER, MOM!" I slam her against the wall and I know I should stop but I can't. "GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!"

"ALEX!" For a second, I thought it was her yelling my name, trying to get me off of her but it's not. Instead, the voice belongs to the person that's pulling me away. "ALEX STOP! ALEX!" Jo…it's my Jo. She didn't leave me. She's right here. "ALEX!" Her hands rest on top of mine and pry them away from my mother's shoulders. "….WALK AWAY!" Jo muscles her way between me and my mother and I reluctantly let go of her shoulders. Jo's hands are on my chest and she's pushing me. I'm starting to go back to normal. For a second there, I was seeing RED. My vision is going back to normal. "Walk away…." Jo's still pushing me back by my chest. My mom is just smirking.

"Move." I mumble, pushing Jo away. Just let me wipe that fucking smirk off her face.

"NO!" Jo is still standing between us. She turns to my mom. "Look ma'am…you need to leave. RIGHT NOW. Just leave…I don't know how long I can control him and if I let him go, he'll kill you…so just leave. Get out of here." Jo's just pushing me back by my chest and much to my surprise and my relief, my mom leaves the room. Something tells me that she just left the room though. I don't think she left the building. "…Alex." Jo calls my name and she says it so calmly and with love that it's hard to not calm down. "Alex…" She takes her hands off my chest and slowly puts them on my cheeks. "Alex…look at me. Look at me, baby…please." It's not the name calling that gets my attention. It's the fact that she just "baby"ed me. Does this mean that we're not over? Because I need her right now. I look in her eyes and I can tell that she really cares about me. "Calm down…that's your mother. Calm down. Calm down…don't do anything stupid. Alex….calm down." She's talking to me in a soft voice. "Calm down…" She slowly takes my hands off of my face and wraps her arms around me. "Calm down…"

I just sigh and put my arms around her too. I don't need this right now. I don't need my mom trying to take my daughter away from me. I'm a good dad…not the best but I'm good and I love her and I just want to keep her. I swear I never hurt my daughter. I love my daughter. She can't take her. She can't take Lyla. If she takes Lyla, I'm not gonna be okay…she can't take her. I kneel a little and put my head on Jo's shoulder. She brings her arms up and wraps them around my neck instead. I feel her fingernails scratch at my scalp and that's when I finally just let tears fall. My mom can't take Lyla. I love her. I'm not the best dad but I love her and that's all a child needs is love. I messed up a lot but I never hurt her. I don't abuse or molest her. She's not neglected. One of Jo's hands goes to the middle of my back and that's when I sniff and let the sobs take over. "…Shh." She whispers to me. "I'm here, okay? I'm right here… I'm right here." She keeps rubbing my head. "It's alright. It's gonna be okay. I promise it's gonna be okay. I promise…I'll…I'll make it okay. I swear it's okay. I'm here for you…I'm not going anywhere, okay? It's gonna be alright…Just focus on right now. She won't do anything. She won't get her…she won't. It's okay…"

I sniff again and all I hear is Jo whispering "it's okay" over and over again.


	44. Reconciliation

I remain staring at the picture of a white cat that's hanging on the wall in front of the chair I'm sitting in, expressionless and emotionless. Have you ever been faced with something so traumatizing that you don't even know what to think about? I mean, you know you should be thinking about the thing that left you speechless…but the very thing that left you speechless has also left you brainless and incapable of even functioning. I don't know what to think or how to feel, so I've been staring at this cat for the last two hours. The cat has long, white fur and a small pink nose. Its eyes are black and the ears are sticking perfectly up and pointed to a soft apex. The more I look at it, the more I realize that it's actually a pretty creepy picture to have hanging up on a children's surgical floor. The cat looks demonic, possessed maybe. Each floor of this hospital has a theme to it and it just so happens that the surgical floor is animal themed. So no matter where on the walls I look, there's bound to be a picture of a creepy looking cat, an ugly alligator or an innocent looking polar bear. Blowing my concentration on the picture of the cat, I hear footsteps nearing me. They're soft footsteps as opposed to the heavy thundering ones they would be if they belonged to Dr. Avery so I don't even have to turn my head to know that they're Jo's footsteps. As much as I hate to admit it after everything I put her through today, I don't know where I would be right now if Jo wasn't here with me.

For starters, I'd probably be in jail for killing my mother if she would've never stepped in and pulled me away from her. I for sure would've killed my mother if Jo wasn't here today. She would've looked at me with that smirk and I would've killed her with my bare hands and I probably wouldn't have felt any remorse for doing it either. The one thing I actually have thought about while I've been sitting here is how Jo's been better to me than I've been to her lately. In retrospect, I think she's got it all wrong. She heard me out about why I'm not too comfortable with Lyla calling her "mommy" and I'm pretty sure she misinterpreted my reasoning. My mind's been all over the place today. I've been so distracted between dealing with Lyla's surgery, dealing with missing Jenna and dealing with my nagging mother. I was too distracted and slightly callous to even realize that Jo was accusing me of something that's totally untrue. She thinks that I view her solely as Jenna's replacement and that couldn't be farther from the truth. She just did something today that reminded me of Jenna and that's all it was. I don't think Jo is Jenna's replacement and if she feels that way then she's got it all wrong. My mind's just been scattered about toady and in all seriousness, only halfway listened to her when she was yelling at me earlier. After taking a step away from everything and sitting here in silence, I've actually had time to reflect on the things she said and I realize that I owe her not only an apology but an explanation.

One thing is for certain though, and that fact is that Jo's been better to me than I've been to her today. I was dismissive with her, accusatory, misunderstanding, short and rude. I've just been so sidetracked with everything about Lyla today that I put Jo on the backburner and that wasn't fair. I guess I still haven't quite figured out how to give equal amounts of attention to both Jo and Lyla yet. For the last eight (going on nine) months, Lyla's had my undivided attention 24/7. I'm not used to having to divide my attention between two people and it got a little hard today when I tried and failed. I unintentionally made a sacrifice today and I chose to give Lyla every last drop of my attention and when Jo confronted me about the whole Jenna thing, I had no attention left to give her so I ended up being very mean to her. I know that's not much of an excuse for me to hurt Jo's feelings the way I did, but that's the reason why it happened. I was rude to her and when she clearly should've walked away and threw in the towel to my bullshit, she didn't. I thought for sure that she realized what an asshole I was and she caught the bus home. I was surprised and very, very, very grateful when she turned up once me and my mother's argument got physical.

Sitting here staring at this cat picture, I realized that Jo's more than my girlfriend…and she's certainly more than a Jenna replacement. She's my best friend in the entire world and while Lyla's been my rock for the last eight months, Jo's been my anchor for as long as I've known her. She's my best friend, my girlfriend, my support system…she's everything. I don't want her to feel like she's nothing but Jenna's replacement because she's not. She's not Jenna's replacement and even though it's still pretty early, I think she could actually become something stronger than Jenna. "Alex…" She calls my name and completes the gesture by putting her hand on my shoulder. Her hand squeezes my shoulder gently, a sign of reassurance and even though I can't bring myself to speak, it's nice to know that she's still here. "You should come in the room…" She takes her hand off my shoulder and puts it on top of my head. "She's gonna want to see you when she wakes up." She uses her index finger to gently trace the swirl in the back of my head that makes my hairline. I keep my hand underneath my chin, clutching my cell phone tightly and staring at the picture. I don't want to move. I know I should probably go in the room so I can be there for Lyla when she wakes up out of her anesthesia, but I can't do it. I can't be in that room when my precious baby girl wakes up, knowing that I'll have to explain to her that her grandmother is trying to take her away from me. As if her life hasn't already been turned completely upside down…this is going to destroy her. She was just beginning to get settled into something normal again. She's going to start school in a few weeks and everything is going to be okay. My mom can't take her. She just can't.

"Alex." Jo calls my name again and this time, she sits down in the empty chair beside me. Just thinking about how my mom's really going to try and take my daughter away from me…I want to cry all over again. I clench my jaw to prevent myself from crying because I feel like I've already done enough crying for one day. Somehow, Jo just knows what clenching my jaw means, because she grabs my hands and tries prying them off my phone. "Alex, come on…You can't just sit here." She uncurls my fingers from around my cell phone and takes it off of me. When I first came out here, it wasn't because I wanted to get away from Lyla's recovery room when she wasn't in it. I came out here because I had to make a few phone calls. I called my dad but he didn't answer so after I called him, I got on the phone with a couple lawyers. I hate the fact that I'm going to have to hire someone to help me fight for my daughter, but I'm not going down without a damn good fight. My mom already has a lawyer and I need one too. I need someone that'll collect evidence that PROVES that I'm a good dad to her. Someone that'll show the judge that my daughter is not abused, malnourished, a victim of molestation or neglected. I need someone that'll give me the best possible chance of keeping my daughter. "Alex, I'm not gonna let you just sit here." Jo puts my phone in her front pocket and keeps pulling at my arms. She came out here about an hour ago while I was yelling at a lawyer on the phone. She tried to get me to calm down, she failed miserably and went back into Lyla's recovery room. She's trying again. "Please get up…I can't take seeing you like this."

I purse my lips together in a hard line, bear down with my teeth to lock my jaw and ignore the fact that my eyes are misting over with tears. Jo talked to my mom for a little bit before she got her to leave the hospital by threatening her and she found out some vital information. First of all, the only reason my mom left the hospital is because Jo somehow convinced her to believe that if she didn't leave the hospital, it would somehow make her appear unlikeable if I were to report what she did to the judges or whatever. My mom fell for it, she left and Jo's a genius. Secondly, Jo talked to her for a little before she left and she found out some information for me. I have to admit that I was initially pissed off at her for talking to my mom. I didn't know what they were talking about, all I did was walk out into the hallway and see Jo sitting next to my mom in the waiting room, chatting. It pissed me off because I feel like Jo should've been on my side. I misjudged, of course. Turns out that Jo didn't tell my mom she was my girlfriend. She was only talking to my mom to get information out of her and help me out with my case. She found out that my mom filed a CPS case against me to look into abuse, molestation and neglect. Eventually, a caseworker is going to want to talk to Lyla but my mom has to provide proof of abuse, molestation and neglect before they can launch an official investigation. I'm trying to get a lawyer before any of this investigation starts because as a pediatrician myself, I know how CPS works. CPS will come to a person's house and remove the child once allegations have been made and an investigation starts. I'm going to try everything in my power to prevent Lyla from being removed from my house.

A stray tear slides out of the corner of my eye and I'm immediately embarrassed by it, but there's no taking it back. Of course, Jo didn't miss the tear. She swipes it away with her hand and pulls me towards her again. I resist her at first but once she really digs her hands into my arm and yanks, I realize she's not going to let me go and I just give in. She forces my head on her chest and wraps her arms around my body. "Nothing's going to happen, Alex…nothing's going to happen." This is the second time today that I've cried in Jo's arms over this bullshit. I don't know what it is about her, but she makes it so easy to just…let everything go. Something about the way she makes me lay on her chest, the way she rubs my head and the way she sweet-talks me just makes me feel comfortable enough to cry in front of her. It's still embarrassing for me to be crying in front of my chick like this, but I know that Jo's not judging and there's nobody else in the world I'd rather be holding me right now than her. I bury my face in her neck and sniff. "It's gonna be alright." She whispers to me. "Nobody's gonna take her. I promise you that…and I don't break promises." Her fingers gently knot themselves through my hair. "I'm going to make this alright. I don't know how…but I am. I swear to you, I'll make this alright."

"How can you promise that?" I mumble into her neck. I should be thinking about a million things right now but all I can focus on is how good the skin on her neck smells. Jo is literally everything a woman should be in my eyes. She's gentle, yet very strong. Fragile but durable. Independent but capable of showing others compassion. She's ladylike, she always smells good, her skin is soft, her hair is always well-kept and she's soft-spoken but she doesn't have a problem telling anyone how she feels. She's everything that a woman should be and a little bit more. I've never thought as highly of a woman as I think of Jo. I didn't even think of Jenna as highly as I think of Jo, and that's saying something because I used to put Jenna on a pedestal. "How can you possibly promise me that, Jo?" I close my eyes at the feeling of her scratching her fingernails across my scalp. "You can't promise that. You can't make that promise…"

"Alex, I'll do whatever I have to do to make sure I can keep that promise." She rests her cheek against the top of my head and continues to scratch my scalp. "I'll sit there in court and tell a judge what an amazing father you are. I'll testify for you, I'll help you pay for the lawyers if you need it, I'll…Alex, I'll be there for you. I'll help you any way that I can. I'm in it with you and I promise I won't let anything happen. Everything is going to work out fine…woman's intuition." She adjusts her arms around me and pulls me a little closer. I can tell she's struggling but there's really nothing I can do to help her. Jo's a very tiny girl and I'm a very big guy. She's trying to hold me but it's like a mouse trying to wrap its arms around a dog…it's just not feasible. "…I don't want you worrying about this. There's no possible way a judge is going to give her to your mom. You already know what kind of dad you are and everything she's accusing you of isn't true. A judge isn't going to take a four year old out of her home if there's no reason to. You're not hitting her, you're not touching her, you don't starve her and you don't leave her in a house by herself. You work hard to provide for her. She has clean clothes, a nice house, running water, electricity…and she loves you. Anyone with eyes can see how much that little girl adores you. There's no chance of your mother getting her. So I don't want you to worry about this anymore. You already have enough on your plate without worrying about this." She stops scratching my scalp, much to my dismay, and starts rubbing the back of my neck. The back of the neck feels good too but I love it when she scratches my scalp more. That shit could put me to sleep. "…Can I have a kiss?" I nod my head. "Alright. Kiss and get your butt out of this chair and go sit with your baby girl."

I sniff again and reluctantly pick my head up off her shoulder. I was perfectly content laying on her shoulder. Jo's shoulder is without a doubt the best seat in the house. But she's right. I should get up and go sit in that room and be there for Lyla because she needs me. I guess Jo's right about a lot of things and that has the tendency to drive me nuts. She's always right and sometimes it's refreshing but more often than not, it's annoying because even when she thinks she's wrong, she ends up being right. I just hope she's right about this crap with my mom. Every allegation my mom is making is false…and that has to count for something, doesn't it? I mean, Jo has a point, doesn't she? A judge won't just take Lyla out of her house if there's no reason to. And I have nothing to hide. I'm not abusing my daughter or anything like that. They can investigate me, they can talk to Lyla…I have nothing to hide. I wipe my face off with my hands, take a deep breath and tilt my head so I can kiss her. I put my lips against hers and kiss her softly, just a simple little kiss to basically tell her "thank you" for everything she's done for me today. She asked me for a kiss…so maybe this means that she's not as mad at me as I thought she was. Maybe this means that we're not broken up.

It's time for me to start pulling my own weight when it comes to Jo though. She does way more for me than I do for her and that's not the way I want this relationship to me. It's fairly clear that she's never going to run away from me like I thought. If she was going to run, she would've done it by now. I've yelled at her countless times over Lyla, I've made her cry twice, we had the most awkward sex in the history of awkward sex and she's still here. I really don't think there's anything I can do to make Jo decide that she needs to run away from me permanently…and if that's true, I gotta start pulling my own weight. I pull out of the kiss and grab ahold of her hand. She wasn't ready to stop kissing me, so her eyebrows are wrinkled and she has a look of worry all over her face because we're usually on the same page when it's time for us to stop kissing. We usually pull away around the same time and she was nowhere near ready. "…I'm sorry, Jo." She tilts her head to the side and raises one eyebrow like a curious puppy. "For what I did earlier…" Her face relaxes once she realizes what I'm apologizing for. "I just wanted to tell you that you're wrong though…and you're usually right, but this time you're wrong…and I lied to you." She slides her hand out of mine but I grab it again. "I lied. When I look at you, I don't see Jenna…and you're very far from her replacement. I'm sorry you feel that way, but I just wanted you to know that you're wrong. That's not where you stand in my heart. Today was just a one-time thing, alright? I saw you laying in bed with Lyla and for a split second, you reminded me of Jenna…that's all it was. It's not like you remind me of her constantly. It was a one-time thing and it sent me a little over the edge to hear Lyla call you that. That's all. You're not her replacement and I'm so sorry if I made you feel that way. Today was just a bad day, that's all. I have good days when it comes to Jenna and I have bad days and today was a bad day." She tries pulling her hand away again but I squeeze it. "Jo, stop…don't let my hand go." I squeeze her hand even tighter. "Look at me." She does. She doesn't look like she believes me though. "I'm ready to move on. I'm ready to move on…with you, Jo. I'm ready."

"And how do you know?" She bucks me. I can see that this conversation still strikes a nerve for her. Her nostrils flare, something that I've noticed that happens when she's angry. "Because I can't keep doing this, Alex. How am I supposed to know that the next time you have a bad day, you're not going to just end it with me? How am I supposed to trust that the next time you have a bad day, this won't happen again? How do you know you're ready to move on? Because you can't just say it to me. You have to mean it…" She rolls her eyes. "Alex…I wasn't. When you came into my life, I wasn't ready to move on from Mark. And honestly? Up until last week, I still wasn't sure if I was ready. It took me up until last week to realize that I want to move on from Mark. Mark is my past and I would really like it if you were my future. I wasn't ready. I was even less ready than you. But you…you MADE me." She points at me. "You made me be ready, Alex. You forced your way into my life, you and that beautiful little girl just wouldn't let me be alone. YOU did that. You forced me to be ready to move on, you asked me to be your girlfriend and you're the reason I'm sitting here right now, in love with Lyla and FALLING in love with you. It's all your fault. So Alex…if you can't be ready…after you MADE me be ready….I'll never forgive you. I'll never forgive you for making me fall for you. So you can't just tell me you're ready to move on when you MADE me be ready. You have to mean it. You have to really mean it. You can't just make me fall for you if you're not ready to catch me…that would be so…unbelievably… _fucked up_."

I tilt my head and look at her with the most serious look I can give. I make my eyes soft, yet stern and I keep a straight face. "You wanna know how I know?" My voice is dense, hard, letting her know that I mean business. "Because when I'm not with you, I'm thinking about you. When you leave my house every morning, the first thing I think about is the next time I'll get to see you again. One of my favorite pastimes is watching you sleep. When I kiss you, I don't ever want to stop. I feel like every part of my body is alive when I look in your eyes and I feel like the world stops spinning when you smile at me. I can spend all night watching you sleep and still feel refreshed the next day. I can look at you in your bra and underwear and think about how beautiful you are, not how much I want to lay you down and screw you. I can look at you naked and not even pop a stiffy because it's more than just sex that comes to my mind when I look at you. My heart skips a beat every time you say my name…it's that…that can't eat, can't sleep type of thing with you. You're the only woman that doesn't make me think about what I've lost…" I can't believe I just poured my heart out to her like that. I feel like a big dope. "You understand everything, understand me…" And I can't believe I'm still going. "And in a world where no one understands me, it's nice to find someone who does. Sometimes you know me better than I know myself. And I don't care what anyone has to say about you, ever. You basically showed me that I don't really need anyone else but you. I've lost my mind in front of you and you're still…here. When I'm a total and complete mess, you still think that the sun shines outta my ass and I think the sun shines outta yours even when you're a wreck." I shrug my shoulders. "I'm crazy about you, Jo. Nothing I can do but accept it. You're my…my silver lining, if that's what you wanna call it. If I'm having a bad day, you're my silver lining. You're the one thing that's always a plus for me and no other woman has ever…EVER…" I emphasize the "ever" so she knows that I'm including Jenna in this as well. "Made me feel like this. And that's how I know I'm ready to move on. I might have a bad day every now and again but nothing anyone says can convince me that I'm not ready to move on. And I'm not ready to move on to just anyone, Jo…let's get that straight. I'm ready to move on to YOU. Not anyone else."

She cracks one of my most favorite soft, toothless smiles. Her big full lips turn up into a grin and her eyes sparkle too. She's smiling at me with her mouth and with her eyes and when she smiles at me like that…that's the kind of smile that makes me feel like the earth stopped spinning. "You think the sun shines outta my ass, Alex?" Her voice is soft, sarcastic though. I nod my head as she starts closing in on me again. "Really?" I nod again just as our lips touch. She always wraps her arms around my neck when we kiss so just to switch things up this time, I put my hands on her waist and lean forward, pushing her against the chair so hard that she can't put her arms around me. I feel her start to pull away so I follow suit and pull away too. "Come on…" To switch things up even more, she's the one to touch my lips after the kiss this time. I'm usually the one to trace my fingers across her sexy lips after we kiss. But this time, she brushes her thumb across my bottom lip and smiles. "We should head back to the room."

"Yeah, we should."

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"She'll be a little sore around the ear for a few days but I'll prescribe some Motrin for that. That should help her pain quite a bit. It might make her drowsy so try not to give it to her if she's going to be going somewhere that requires her to be awake; like school or some type of function." The doctor that did Lyla's surgery is standing next to her bed, talking to us and writing stuff down in the pink chart. He's pretty tall, lean and his skin is a nice bronze color; the type of color I would get if I stood out in the sun for an entire day straight. His eyes are a cross between blue and green and he has a little bit of curly hair on top of his head. I think Alex said his name is Dr. Avery. He's nice looking…for a doctor. "Things couldn't have gone better though. The bone wasn't too badly infected so we only had to remove a very small portion of it and the eardrum is moving as normal. I did go ahead and install a ventilation tube though. I think she could really benefit from it, seeing as the entire reason for the infection is because her ear wasn't draining properly. She has a tube in her left ear that should fall out within 4-6 months…the tube should help her ear drain fluids a lot better but avoid getting it wet. You know the deal with tubes, Karev." He closes the chart and puts on a pair of gloves now. "I'm just gonna let you take a look at her incision and I'll be out of your way." He starts taking off the gauze that's wrapped around Lyla's head. "You have one tough little girl here, Karev…she did well the entire time and she'll be ready to go home tomorrow afternoon."

"Yeah, I know. She's tough." Alex stands up and hovers over Lyla to see the place they operated at once the bandages are off. Lyla was awake for about five minutes after Alex and I came back in the room, but they pumped her full of pain meds that make her drowsy so although the anesthesia is all worn off, she's still a little tired from all the medications they have her on. "Is there any special way I gotta take care of her stitches, Jax?" Alex starts rubbing Lyla's hair as she sleeps. Dr. Avery carefully finishes unwrapping the gauze on Lyla's head and lets Alex take a look. "…Those dissolvable?" It actually doesn't look bad. Behind her ear, she has a long cut that's all stitched together and that's all it is. There's some clear, sticky gel-like stuff rubbed across the stitches but that's as decent as it gets. It looks like it was a minor procedure. You can't even tell that they had to cut a piece of her skull out. "Or am I gonna have to take them out?"

"I used dissolvable stitches." Dr. Avery confirms. He moves Lyla's unruly, silky brown hair out of the way and gently pushes Lyla's ear forward. There's some dried blood behind the plane of her ear but still, it doesn't look too bad. "They'll dry up when her incision is all healed." Alex sighs when he sees the blood behind her ear and places the palm of his hand against her forehead. "She shouldn't lie on this side of her head for at least a week. And I'm going to give her a special cap to place over the ear when she takes a bath. No washing her hair until I clear her when she comes back for her follow-up appointment. No headphones in that ear, no hanging upside down, no rigorous activity. I recommend that she stays in bed for at least a week but she probably won't feel like doing much of anything besides laying down anyway. She can resume a normal diet. Um…if you see her sneezing, try and make sure she doesn't hold the sneeze in. Holding her sneezes could potentially rupture her eardrum…it's unlikely but I've seen it happen. Try and keep her from coughing, coughing is a no. Bring her back to see me if she starts bleeding profusely. A little bit of blood is fine but she shouldn't be leaking blood…you know what I mean. There will be a scab that falls out of the ear and that's normal too, don't be alarmed if you wake her up one morning and there's a giant scab on her pillow or whatever….any other questions, call me and ask. Other than that, I think I explained everything…Just have her take it easy." He finishes explaining everything and starts wrapping bandages back around Lyla's ear. "Like I said, everything went smoothly. No complications."

"Thanks Jax…means a lot." Alex pounds the doctor's fist as a manly form of "thank you" and nods his head, resuming his staring regimen at Lyla. I look away as the doctor starts taping the bandages to Lyla's head again. Being that me and Alex reconciled after our argument earlier, I feel like it's okay if I reach through the side bar of her bed and hold her hand. Poor baby. She's sleeping so soundly and peacefully but I can tell just by looking at her that she's in pain. She's been through a lot today. She's been stuck with more needles than I care to count and she's been cut open….all in one day. She had blood drawn, a CAT scan, a spinal tap and major surgery on her ear. I stroke her tiny fingers and stare at her. I can see the marks around her mouth where they put her anesthesia mask and there's residue from the tape they used to take the tube in her mouth on her cheek. She still has a tube up her nose and that tube is being held in place by being tucked behind her ears. She still has the IV taped in her right hand and she has a bunch of bracelets on her wrist. The gown they made us put on her for surgery has little dinosaurs on it and since her princess blanket is rising up around her legs, I can see that her pull-up is hanging out the bottom of her gown. "…They're gonna put a rollaway cot in her room downstairs. You can sleep on the cot if you want to stay…if you want to go home, I'll take you home real quick." Alex sits down in the chair next to Lyla's bed after Dr. Avery leaves us alone.

"Why would I have you take me home?" I let Lyla's hand go and look across the bed at Alex. "That makes no sense. I already called off work for tomorrow and everything. That doesn't make any sense if I have you take me home." I adjust the blanket around her legs and glance at the clock hanging on the wall. It's 9:54 at night. We've been here since like 8:30 this morning and she's still not even out of recovery yet. It's truly been a long day. "I'm staying. I knew what I was in for when we left the house this morning. I called off work for tomorrow and I'm here to stay."

"You called off work?" He sounds shocked though I don't know why. I nod my head and go back to watching Lyla sleep. I'm glad she seems peaceful at rest right now. I can't stop thinking about how Alex's mom wants to take her off of him. She really is a bitch. At first, when I initially heard Alex speak about his mother, I thought he was just being melodramatic like me whenever he said his mom was a bitch. No, I see that he really means that. Alex is such a wonderful father…why would she want to take his daughter away? He does everything for her and it's easy to see that Lyla's his entire world. His entire life revolves around her and I don't know much about fathers considering the fact that I never had one, but I'm pretty sure that Alex is everything a daddy should be. Honestly? I have no idea what I'm going to do. I promised him that I would make sure that his mother didn't take her but I really have no idea how I'm going to stick to that. A promise is a promise though, and I never break promises. So I'm going to have to find a way to make sure he gets to keep his daughter. At first when I said it, I was just trying to make him feel better. But when he started crying, I realized that I need to keep up with that promise no matter what. So I seriously haven't the slightest clue what I'm going to do to ensure that Alex gets to keep his daughter but I'm going to keep thinking until I come up with something. I'll do anything to keep this promise to him. He HAS to keep his daughter. I'm afraid I'll lose him if something happens and Lyla gets taken away….and I don't mean lose him as in him breaking up with me, if you know what I mean. Well for starters, I'm going to be one of his witnesses in court if it goes that far. I'll get on the stand and tell everyone what a great father he is. They might think I'm biased, considering the fact that I'm his girlfriend but if I have to, I'll break up with him. I'll break up with him, I'll pretend like I hate his guts but I'll still get up there and tell everyone that he should keep his daughter…that should convince a judge. If that doesn't work then I can always take care of his mother myself. It's been a few years since I've been in a fist fight but I'm pretty sure I can take down an old lady and make sure she drops the case against him. I might be facing some jail time since I have priors, but at least Alex will get to keep Lyla. Or I can always hire someone to kill her. That's a little extreme, but people do it all the time. People hire hitmen all the time to off someone they want dead. I can hire a hitman to off Alex's mother. More jail time but again, at least Alex will get to keep Lyla if his mother's dead. Or…if none of that works…I can always bribe the judge. I'm a waitress so obviously I don't make enough money to offer him enough to persuade him to rule in Alex's favor, but I can offer him other things. Trading sex for a ruling is degrading…and I'm pretty sure it's illegal, but I'll do anything to make sure Alex gets to keep Lyla…even if it means selling my body. Unless the judge is a girl, in that case I don't know what I would do. But I'll try anything. I'll fake a breakup just so they'll believe me on the stand, I'll beat up Alex's mom if I have to, I'll hire someone to kill her or I'll sleep with the judge. Whatever it takes, I'll do. I made a promise to him and I intend to keep that promise. "You didn't have to call off work Jo…I didn't know you'd do that for her."

"Why wouldn't I?" I act as if I wasn't just thinking about all the possible things I might have to do if it turns out that his mom has a case after all and just act natural. "I wouldn't let you go through this alone first of all and second of all…well…" I bite my lip while I hurry up to decide whether I should say this or not. He could take offense to it like he took offense earlier but if I just explain to him… "I called off work when they first told us that she would need a surgery. And up until that point…" I stumble over my words again because I don't want to pick the wrong choice of words and have him freak out again. "Up until that point, I was still under the impression that you thought I was like her mother, so I just…called off." I shrug.

"…You still are like her mother, Jo." He mumbles. "Any woman that'll sit by her bed side...holding her hand and stuff…" He sighs. "Any woman that'll act like you act is worthy of being called 'mommy'. No matter if I'm having a good day or a bad day…" That makes me smile but just as quickly as the smile comes, it fades…

I really have to do everything I can to make sure he gets to keep his daughter. I made that promise and I'm not taking it lightly.


	45. Suddenly

I brush my fingers along the silky material of his quilt and swing my feet since they don't touch the ground when I sit on his bed. I can't decide whether his bed is abnormally high off the ground or if I'm just short. The hospital was nice and all but it feels good to be back home. I'm beyond exhausted and I can't wait to walk down the street, go home, take a shower and lie down for a few hours. It's going on 3:30 in the afternoon and we're just now getting home from the hospital. We left Millerton at 8:30 yesterday morning and we're just now getting home at 3:30 the next day. I started to have Alex drop me off at my house but I decided against it. I started this whole process with him and it's only right if I'm here to finish it as well. It's not like we live miles apart, so after he finishes putting Lyla to bed, I'm going to tell him goodbye and head home. Like I said, the hospital was nice and all but I need a hot shower and a warm bed. I slept—or tried to sleep, rather—on the rollaway cot with Alex last night. It was kind of small so we had to adjust positions like twenty times before we just realized that it wasn't going to work and gave up. The cot was entirely too small for the both of us, so Alex let me have the cot and he slept in a chair. I still couldn't sleep on the cot though so about halfway through the night, I let Alex have it and I sat in the chair and watched TV. I'm running on the six hours of sleep I got the night before last night and I'm exhausted. I officially haven't slept in 24 hours and I've never been so tired and drained of energy in my life.

The door to Alex's bedroom opens and like a godsend, he walks through it. Now that he got Lyla into her bed properly, I can leave. I know he could've tucked Lyla in without me being here but like I said, I wouldn't have felt right if I just had him drop me off at his house. I started this ordeal with him and I wanted to finish it with him too. Well, since he's back from putting Lyla in her bed, I can officially say that I've crossed the finish line and my prize is going home to take a shower. I stand up from his bed and yawn. "How long is she going to sleep for?" I ask, picking up my cell phone and the charger. I think I might have enough energy to run down the sidewalk so I can get to my house faster. He shrugs his shoulders, too busy cleaning out the bag that he packed for the hospital to look at me. I cover my mouth and yawn again. "Alright then…call me when she wakes up and I'll walk back down." I tilt my head to the side to crack my neck and tilt it to the other side to crack it again. "I'll see you later."

"Why don't you just stay here?" He finishes emptying out the bag and hangs it on the back of the chair that sits in front of the desk in the corner of his room. "You know I hate it when you leave." He unbuttons his jeans and takes them off. He starts taking of his shirt next. "And if you're coming back here anyway, you might as well just stay for now and go home later." He gathers up his clothes and tosses them in his dirty clothes hamper. "Just go home later."

"Alex, I'm so tired that I'm starting to see double and I haven't showered since Friday, before our date. I'm tired, I smell and I need my bed." He looks at me with narrowed eyes and a crooked chagrin…and I already know what he's going to say next. He's going to say that I can do everything I need to do here and while that's partially true, I'd rather be in the comfort of my own home. It's not that I don't like spending so much time over Alex's house because in all truthfulness, I do. I love being over here 24/7. I love sleeping with him and waking up next to him. But I've been spending way too much time over here. I'm starting to feel like I live here which again, isn't necessarily a bad thing but it's not right. As much as I feel like I do, the fact of the matter is that I DON'T live here. I live down the street in my own house and I pay the bills for that house and I feel like as long as I'm paying to live in that house, I should actually LIVE there. I spend way too much time over here. "I don't have clothes over here, Alex." I speak again once it's been a minute and a half and he's still looking at me stupid. "I need to go home…where I have underwear and actual pajamas. I don't have any of that over here."

"So I'll get you some." He turns his back to me and starts to take off his boxers. He pulls them down, lets them fall to his ankles and steps out of them. I can't help but really get a good look at his butt. His butt is so cute. It's all little and muscly and white. His back is really tan and golden but his ass is bright and pasty and a little bit hairy. He should really lay outside with his ass facing the sun to even out his tan. It's so little though and it jiggles when he moves. It's adorable. "You spend enough time over here. I've already started to collect your things…you left a pair of underwear over here last week and there's a t-shirt too. I got you a toothbrush and hair stuff…I can get you some deodorant." He wraps a towel around his waist and turns back around to face me. "I can always pick you up some underwear and a bra or two and some pajamas. Just tell me what size you wear. I'll buy the stuff and add it to your drawer."

"My drawer?" I raise my eyebrow. He goes over to his dresser and opens up a drawer on the top right side of the dresser. There's a pair of my black and white polka dotted and lace underwear in the drawer, one of my purple Northwestern University t-shirts and a single multicolored sock of mine that I've been searching for. All clothes that I left over here the night I went down on him. I had a camisole on underneath the t-shirt and I got hot and took off the t-shirt. The underwear came off when I asked him for a pair of shorts to wear instead. Going down on him made me a little bit wet so I just took the underwear off when he gave me the pair of basketball shorts to put on. And I honestly have no idea how the sock got over here. I might've just accidentally left it in his dryer since I was doing laundry that day. "…Alex, you _do_ realize that I don't live here, don't you?"

"Of course I do, Joey. I just collected some of the things you left over here, washed them and gave you a drawer. You're my girlfriend, Jo. You spend the night over here a bunch of times and you're going to need extra clothes. What's so bad about giving you a drawer?" He shuts it again and walks over to me. He puts his hands on my shoulders and looks at me with a goofy look on his face. I squint my eyes and raise both my eyebrows slowly, skepticism running all through my mind. First of all, since when did he start calling me 'Joey'? That sounds weird to me. That name has always sounded strange to me…maybe because I prefer to just be called "Jo" and I feel like "Joey" is kind of making a mockery of that. I know that "Joey" is an actual name that some people actually go by but I think that's weird. "Lighten up, Jo. It's a t-shirt, a pair of underwear and a sock."

"…First of all…" I shrug his hands off my shoulders before I start telling him everything that's wrong with the fact that I have a drawer. "I never leave more than a change of underwear and a toothbrush at someone's house, so my t-shirt is coming home with me and you can forget about buying me more clothes." I really hope he doesn't ask for an explanation as to why I don't leave anything more than underwear and a toothbrush at other people's houses because I don't have one to give him. I mean, I never really had much…but maybe it's because I don't trust people too easily. I never really owned a lot of clothes or anything like that but more so than that, I don't trust very many people. I don't know why I'm like that, but it's the way I've always been. I won't miss a pair of underwear or a toothbrush if I lose them or leave them behind. I really don't even understand my reasoning sometimes. It's just something about myself that's always been the way it is. "Second of all, I didn't ask for a drawer. Why is it that I have a drawer and you don't? You never spend the night over my house…"

"Well it's not always possible for me to stay the night over your house." He backpedals and sits down on his bed. "But since it bothers you…" He motions with his hands for me to sit down on the bed too. I shake my head because as of right now, I'm still going home when we're done talking and if I sit down, he's going to try and convince me to stay. He pats the space next to him and I shake my head once again. He wrinkles his brows and slaps the empty space harder. I roll my eyes and eventually give in to him. I walk over to the bed and sit down next to him. "Since it bothers you…" He turns toward me and runs his fingers through my hair. "Next time we go on a date, I'll make sure my dad keeps Lyla for the night and I'll sleep over your house. And I'll make sure I leave a pair of my boxers over your house…that way you can start a drawer for me." He tilts his head to the side and closes in. I pull back at first because I know if kiss him, I'm basically giving in and telling him that I'll stay here. He puts his hand on my jaw and holds my face still. He starts closing in on me again but I bite down on my lip to let him know that I don't want to kiss him. His eyes are soft and begging. I sigh and let my lip go. I lean in and make our lips touch. Neither one of us add tongue to it, but we open our mouths and kiss each other like we mean it. He pulls away from the kiss and grins at me. "Now will you stay?"

I wasn't ready to stop kissing him. I wasn't ready for him to pull away and I still want to taste his breath and feel his lips against mine. "…Yeah." I nod my head and agree specifically because I want to shut him up and kiss him again. After I agree to stay, I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him back to my mouth. He opens his mouth up again and this time, I take it upon myself to push my tongue in his mouth. Words can't explain how much I love kissing Alex. I don't know how to explain it but I just…I do. I love kissing him. Our tongues crash against each other and I curl my fingers through his hair. He turns his head to the side, which allows his tongue to get deeper in my mouth and although it's quiet in the room, the sound of our lips and tongues meeting is loud. My hands migrate away from his head and slide down to his back. My fingers trace along his muscles. His back is so sexy. I just want to grip it and dig my fingernails into it…while he's on top of me though. I can't help but grab onto the skin on his back and squeeze it. I want him so bad. I just want him on top of me, inside of me. I don't care if he makes love to me, I don't care if he's soft about it or hard…I just want him. He gently takes his mouth away from mine and I'm actually glad that he did. If he didn't, I might've gotten a little carried away. His lips graze my jaw. He moves his head down a little and presses his lips neatly to my neck. It starts with a soft kiss on my neck but he wraps his lips around my skin and sucks on the spot right below my ear. My eyes roll to the back of my head and I bite down on my bottom lip as I take my hands off his back and put them on his head again. "Alex…" I whisper his name…not because I wanted to whisper but because I'm starting to really, really, really want him. If he keeps kissing me right here, I might not be able to control myself anymore. "Alex…" I say his name again and try moving his head away from my neck.

"Hmm?" He stops sucking on my neck but completely ignores the fact that I'm trying to push his head away. Instead, he just moves to a different spot on my neck and starts sucking on that too. He knows what he's doing. I told him after we had our awkward sexual encounter that my neck is the one spot on my body that he cannot kiss without making me want to jump on his lap and ride the life out of him. And now he's kissing my neck and he won't stop kissing my neck and I'm about to just explode. I dig my teeth into my bottom lip and just try to bear with it. I've been doing well so far but I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to just take it. I drag my fingers through his hair and take a breath. He moves his mouth down to my collarbone and his hands wind up on my hips. He pushes the palms of his hands into my hips, trying to force me to lay back on the bed. I resist him for a moment before I just give in. I'm so weak. I can't resist him and I can't act like I don't want to do something I clearly do. I lie down on his bed and he lies down beside me, his face resting at my collarbone and his hands sliding up my shirt. I open my eyes and stare up at the ceiling, trying to steady my breathing.

I really do want to have sex with him but not like this. I haven't showered in two days, I'm tired…I don't want our first time to be like this. He moves his head down a little further, using his tongue to trace the trail he makes. My shirt is a V-neck, so he moves his mouth to the top of my right boob and prods it with his tongue before he starts sucking on it too. His hands meet together in the middle of my jeans and I feel his fingers fumble around for a brief moment before I hear the button of my jeans snap and feel the two pieces of fabric sprawl away from each other. He slides one of his hands up my shirt, past my bellybutton before the palm of it rests on the same boob he's currently using his mouth on. His other hand is wriggling its way down the front of my jeans but he seems to be having trouble actually getting it between my legs. I close my eyes again and continue to bite down on my lip. This isn't the way I wanted it to happen but it's the way it's going to happen and I'll be damned if I squander this moment. He's forcefully trying to shove his hand between my legs but I'm too busy becoming intoxicated by the licking and kneading he's doing on my boob. Just when I feel like I'm losing my mind, he stops sucking my boob for a moment to talk to me. "Lemme in…" He mumbles before resuming what he was doing with his mouth. I'm not sure what he meant by that…

I put my hand on the back of his head and rub his hair some more. The momentary lapse in kissing and sucking on my boob gave me a moment to sober up and get back in touch with what he's doing to the rest of my body and that's when I realize what he meant by what he just said. The reason he can't get his hand between my legs is because my legs are closed. I part my thighs enough for him to comfortably maneuver between them and he doesn't hesitate taking full advantage of it. He slips his hand deeper between my legs and his fingers gently begin to brush over my sex. I pull on his hair a little, just so I can bear with what he's doing. I have a very love/hate relationship with foreplay. I love it because the anticipation builds up and it makes the actual moment so much more worth it but I hate it because I just wish he would put in it me already. He rolls over and supports his weight on his elbow as he takes his hand out of my pants. I'm not sure how flimsy or sheer the pair of underwear I have on are but I have no doubt in my mind that he felt how wet I am through the fabric. He takes both his hands off of me and hovers over my body. I just stare up at him. He's not staring at me back though. He's maneuvering my shirt. I sit up and help him out though. Before I know it, my shirt is off my body and on the floor.

I reach back and unclasp my bra. He pulls the bra off and tosses it on the floor along with my shirt and he freezes, staring at my bare chest. I'm not cocky or conceited, I just know that I have a nice body…but I do wish that my boobs were better looking for him. They're not very big…and my nipples are kind of big but they're my boobs. I just hope he's not staring at them because they're ugly. I've been told that I have pretty boobs before but I don't think they're that pretty. Alex licks his lips and lunges forward, resting his hands on both of them. He tilts his head to the side and kisses my neck again, beginning to knead my boobs. He lays me down on the bed again and gets on top of me. I keep my legs open for him and when he lays between them, our pelvises touch. He sucks on my neck and starts rocking back and forth, rubbing his erection against my vagina. I squeeze my eyes shut and take a deep breath. "Alex…" I whisper his name. The fact that he's practically dry-humping me on this bed is sending my body into a frenzy. I can feel myself getting wetter by the moment and I want him so bad right now. I just want him.

He pulls away from me and starts taking off my pants. I help him by kicking them off once they're around my ankles. They fall to the ground in a heap and he repositions himself between my legs. I put my hand on the back of his head and force him to kiss my lips again. When we kiss this time, I shove my tongue deep into his mouth and kiss him hard, letting him know just how much I want him. He runs his fingers through my hair and slows the kiss down a little. When he pulls away, he looks me in my eyes and the feeling I get is something indescribable. It's like our hearts are connected and our brains are exactly on the same wavelength. He wants to tell me that he loves me…I can feel it. The feeling is mutual. I want to tell him the same thing. His eyes are warm and I don't even feel like he's looking at me. I feel as though he's looking at the real me, the real Jo. He's looking at me and the look is enough to make my heart feel like it's swollen. He sees me…for the first time since we've been together, I don't doubt that. He sees me. He opens his mouth and I already know what he's about to say. But before he can say it, he's interrupted by the sound of his phone ringing. Both our faces fall at the exact same time.

"Dammit." He mutters and climbs off of me, from between my legs. Disappointed, I sit up and pull his quilt over my bare chest. I don't know if I'm more disappointed for the fact that the mood has officially been ruined and we're not going to have sex today or if I'm more disappointed for the fact that he was about to tell me that he loved me and he didn't get the chance to. Clearly annoyed, he stomps over to his dresser and snatches up his phone. "Hello?" He answers angrily. I sigh and run my fingers through my hair. I definitely think I'm more disappointed over the fact that we were about to have sex for the first time and the mood is now ruined. Come to think of it, maybe I don't want him to tell me that he loves me. If he were to tell me that he loves me right now in this moment, I would feel obligated to say it back. I would feel like I have to say it back and in all honesty, I don't know if I mean it. I have love for Alex, don't get me wrong. I have a lot of love for that man and I'd do anything in this world for him. But I don't know if I'm in love with him just yet. It's still too early for me to say that I love him for sure and with the kind of person I am, I wouldn't say something like that if I didn't mean it. I'm 1000000% sure that I'm falling in love with him. I'm falling in love with him and I fall deeper every single day that I'm with him. But I don't know if I'm all the way in love with him just yet.

I sigh again and look around the room to see if I can locate my shirt. I guess we'll have sex eventually. It's really starting to seem as if it's just not meant for me and Alex to sleep together. Every time we try to take it a step further than oral, something always happens. Either it's super awkward and we stop or the damn phone rings. I'm sure that we'll have sex eventually though…I guess these last two times just weren't the right time for us to do it. Maybe the phone ringing was actually a godsend. We're not exactly alone in the house. And even though I'm not a screamer and Lyla sleeps hard, I still wouldn't want to run the risk of waking her up if we just so happened to be loud. I mean, I'm not a screamer but then again, I didn't think I was a squirter either and Alex made me do that like it was something textbook and second nature to him. Also, I would've liked to have been properly showered and clean for our first time so again, maybe the phone ringing was an act of fate or whatever. I find my shirt and pick it up. Alex is pacing around the room, screaming into the phone. I think it's his dad on the phone because it's not angry screaming, it's just yelling.

"Whatever, pop." Alex mumbles into the phone, further confirming my suspicions of it being his father that he's talking to. "I'll call you later." He hangs up the phone quickly and puts it back on his dresser. He stressfully runs his fingers through his hair and sighs, as if he just had the most difficult conversation known to man. "…I'm gonna go take a shower…and then maybe we can take a nap."

"Sounds good."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Do you think maybe you can move over?" I rest my hands against her back and push her. One thing I really hate about sleeping with Jo is that she monopolizes my ENTIRE bed. I have no idea how such a tiny person can demand so much space but she does it. She takes up 90% of my bed and leaves me with a measly 10%. "There's no way you need this much space. You're like what? 90 pounds?" I push her over again but she doesn't even budge. Instead, she just laughs at me and continues scrolling through her cell phone. "Jo! I'm serious, scoot over! We have to share! I'm hanging off the edge and you're living large!" I prop myself up on my elbow and look at all the empty space on the bed that she's wasting. I drape my arm across her waist and sigh. "You're not gonna move over, are you? You monopolize the whole damn bed." She puts her phone on the dresser next to her side of the bed and turns her back towards me, completely ignoring my requests to scoot over. "…Goodnight, Jo." I mumble and just lie down on my pillow. I wrap my arms around her waist and hold her.

"…Night, Alex." She says in a very playful, teasing kind of tone. I won't sugarcoat it; I was pissed when the phone rang earlier. I was about to finally seal the deal and have sex with her but NO, the phone had to ring. It was just my dad, calling to make sure we got home alright with Lyla and asking me if he could come over to visit her a little later. The phone rang just as I was about to tell her something. I was about to tell her that I think I love her. I don't know why, but looking down at her put a lot of things into perspective for me and it made me realize that I definitely have strong feelings for this woman. I think I might love Jo but at this point, I don't know if I should've told her. I think I'll keep it to myself until I'm absolutely certain that I love her so for that reason, I am a little bit thankful that the phone rang. Anyway, after I told her about the love thing, I was going to take her underwear off and kiss every single inch of her body…and I was going to make love to her. I wasn't going to have sex with her—I was going to make love…at least for a little while. After the lovemaking, I was going to show her what kind of man I really am in bed. I had it planned out and it was going to be perfect until my dad called and ruined everything.

We'll have sex eventually. I mean, it's bound to happen. I guess all the ruined potential and wasted anticipation won't do anything but make the actual moment that much more special. I imagine that when it actually happens and we actually have sex, it'll be so much better because we waited so long and the buildup was great. I squeeze my arms around Jo's waist and inhale the scent of her still-damp hair. I think this is more fitting than sex anyway. Both of us are extremely tired from the long ordeal we just went through with Lyla and I think taking a nap is more important than sex at the moment. We both took showers and as soon as we climbed between the sheets, the ruined sex was long forgotten about in the midst of our sleepy thoughts. I stroke my fingertips across her lower stomach and close my eyes…and that's when she moves over. A smile slides across my face as I scoot over too, making sure that I'm not hanging off the edge of the bed anymore. "Thank you." I mumble to her.

"...I thought I owed you..." She puts her hands against mine. "For leaving you with blue balls earlier." She laughs softly. I stick my tongue out and blow a raspberry on the back of her neck. "ALEX! You weirdo, stop!" She pushes against me and digs her elbow into my stomach. "…But next time I'm not moving over. Next time you're stuck hanging off the edge. I need more space than you do."

"Oh, please." I mumble. "It's MY bed, therefore I should automatically get to take up more space than you. You're lucky I'm a gentleman because at the end of the day, it is MY bed."

"So? I like to sprawl out while I sleep…you should know that by now." She scoots closer to me so that her butt is against my groin and relaxes. "Now I'm going to bed…if you'd kindly stop yapping in my ear, blue balls." She mutters. She's gonna stop calling me "blue balls." For one, she didn't give me blue balls earlier. It's not like we actually started having sex and we got interrupted in the middle of it. Believe me, if we had actually started going at it, I wouldn't have stopped. The phone call would've had to wait. And for two, she would've known if she had given me blue balls. I've had that once in my entire life and it was because the girl I was having sex with…her parents came home and we had to stop. I wanted to cry so bad because blue balls is no joke. That crap hurts like hell. So if I would've had a case of it earlier, she would've known because she would've had to pick me up off the floor and wipe my tears. I wish there was a such thing as blue balls for a chick. If there was, she would understand why that shit is nothing to joke about. That's the most painful thing ever. "…Alex?" She calls my name. I was sure that she was asleep but I guess not. I don't answer her though, only because I want to know what she'd do if I really was asleep. "…Goodnight, blue." I feel her fingernails gently scratch my arm.

Although she can't see me, I smirk to myself. "Goodnight, super soaker."

"…What the hell?" She picks her head up and turns towards me. She's smiling at me but she's clearly confused. "Super soaker? What is that? Like…like the water gun?" I start to laugh. EXACTLY like the water gun. It took me a while to come up with that but I think it suits her. She gets wet…like…SUPER wet. I'm talking so wet that she'll drip; which is a good thing too because I've sex with a girl that couldn't keep herself wet and it was the worst sex I've ever had in my entire life. But Jo? She gets…she just gets so wet and that's sexy. And not to mention, she squirts. I had to change my sheets after I ate her out the other night because she got them soaking wet. So yeah…super soaker. "What the hell is that?"

"Well you have a nickname for me, I just thought I owed you one too. And since I had to change my sheets after I ate you out the other night…I figured super soaker was for the best. Or I could call you splashy…whichever you prefer." I kiss her cheek.

"Stop…that never happened before." She taps my arm. "That was the first time that's ever happened to me…it was one time."

"Well one time and worthy of a nickname." I chuckle. "No but seriously…goodnight, Jo."

"Night."

 **X X X**

"Here Ly, I want you to eat more…" I hold a slice of pizza by her mouth but she won't even lift her head up to eat it. She's been bouncing back and forth between my lap and Jo's lap and it just so happens to be Jo's lap's turn. I think this is the way I would like to spend the rest of my life. I would like to live the rest of my life exactly the way this moment is right now. With my daughter sitting on my girlfriend's lap and my girlfriend sitting on the opposite end of the couch from me, shoving pizza down her throat and watching the lame Dolphin movie I've watched five million times before. We have a box of pizza sitting on the coffee table and an entire bottle of Sprite at our disposal. It's not perfect, but I love it and I wish that I could say that this is where my story ends. I wish I could say that my story, my journey, ends right here on this couch. I lost my wife to cancer but a perfect stranger just waltzed into my life, made me fall in love with her and everything's fine now. But still…in the back of my mind is the lingering thought that this can't possibly be where my story ends. Not without a fight from my mother, of course. "I want you to eat this, okay?" I hold the pizza by her mouth. She slowly picks her head up off Jo's chest and takes a meek little bite of pizza. She chews it slowly because it hurts her to chew but she has to eat something if she's going to continue to take these pain meds. "Good girl."

Jo rests her cheek against Lyla's head and chews her own bite of pizza. All of a sudden, the doorbell rings. It's my dad. He said he was going to come over and visit Lyla since he couldn't make it to the hospital while she was still in it. I stick my own slice of pizza on top of the cardboard box and stand up.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"Here, more pizza." I hold up her slice so she can take a bite while Alex makes his way to the front door. "You feeling better, Lala?" I kiss her cheek once she takes her bite of pizza and rub her stomach. It's clear that she's still in some degree of pain, but she's taking it like a trooper. She hasn't cried or whined about anything much. She's just been very cuddly. She constantly wants to be held. "It's okay, baby." Much to my surprise, she hasn't really been acting like much of a baby aside from the wanting to be held thing. She's been telling me and Alex when she has to use the bathroom and she hasn't asked for her pacifier not once. I'm so proud of her. "You want more?" She shakes her head. "Alright." I put the pizza down on her plate and just let her rest and watch the movie. I'm actually surprised she's still awake. Alex and I both slept until about 6:30 and when we woke up, she was still sleeping. Alex woke her up so he could give her a bath and I ordered the pizza. She wanted to take some medicine and go back to sleep but Alex didn't want her to so he brought her down here and turned on a movie instead. There's honestly no other way I'd rather spend my Sunday night than sitting here on the couch watching a movie and eating pizza with my two babies.

"Jo…" I hear Alex call my name from the kitchen. I have a bad feeling now. It's just the way he said my name. He said it like he has some bad news for me. I thought that he was gone a little too long for him to have just been answering the door for his father. I thought something bigger might've been wrong but I put the thought out of my head. Now, after hearing the way he called my name, I have a really bad feeling all of a sudden.

"Stay right here baby, okay?" I put Lyla down off the couch and stand up. I really don't know what could be the reason behind him calling me but the tone of his voice did not sound good at all. I'm nervous. I slowly walk into the kitchen and what I see…well, I had the right to be nervous. Two men in black suits are standing in Alex's kitchen and they're both carrying briefcases.

I have a really bad feeling about this…

* * *

 **A/N:** I guess now would be a bad time to tell you guys that I'm going on vacation tomorrow and there won't be an update for the next three days...


	46. And For That Reason

The more I look at the two men standing before me in Alex's kitchen, the more I realize that they actually aren't two men. One is very clearly a man; boasting a scruffy black beard, pale white skin, oodles of thick black hair and chocolate brown eyes. He's carrying a hefty black briefcase and he's dressed in a black suit with a blue tie around his neck. He looks soft and easy going, yet very stern and professional; a mixture that makes sense because I assume that you have to be a delicate balance of those four characteristics if you want to be a social worker. The second person isn't actually a man at all; she just looked like one at first glance. She looks a lot friendlier than the man, with smooth dark skin, a short haircut and a deep navy blue business suit on. Her briefcase isn't as big and bulky as the man's and her demeanor is a lot more child-friendly than her partner's. The two of them look as if they're here for strict business but as I continue to look at them and read their faces, I can tell that they weren't expecting to walk into this. Their faces have equal amounts of shock and surprise as their eyes trace around the kitchen. I don't know much about Child Protective Services but I don't think that they're used to this. I think they're used to walking into houses that are disgusting and dirty and Alex's house is very far from that. I hope that the more they look around, the more they realize that they aren't really needed here.

Alex sits down at his kitchen table and although he seems to be functioning on a normal human being kind of level, I can tell by the look on his face that he's defeated. His eyes are glossed over and his expression is just blank. He sat down like his legs couldn't support his weight anymore and he looks hollow; like someone sucked all the life out of him and left nothing but a shell of his body. He's lifeless, emotionless and beaten. Once the two social workers are done with their visual onceover of the house, they turn their attention to him and get right down to business. "I'm Mitch Baker and this is my partner Rhonda Mason…we're with the Child Protective Services unit of Pensacola County." The man extends his hand out to Alex but Alex doesn't take it. I don't think it's meant as a sign of disrespect, I just think that Alex seriously can't lift his hand up. I think he's too numb to do anything besides stare blankly at the cabinet below the sink like he's currently doing. The man takes his hand away and clears his throat. "Have you any idea why we're here today, Mr. Karev?" Alex remains motionless. I don't even think he's breathing right now.

I take a step closer to Alex and stand behind him while he sits in the chair. "Josephine Wilson." I offer my hand to the man and speak up in place of Alex. Like I said, I don't know much about CPS but I do know something about law enforcement officials and I do know that it's always worse if the authoritative figures view you as unlikeable or rude. That might make them nitpick and find even the most minor provocations and give them reasons to want to punish you. And Alex is genuinely not trying to be rude or unlikeable; he's just in shock and he can't speak. So I'll speak on his behalf. The man shakes my hand and gives me a warm smile. I shake the woman's hand as well and clear my throat. "I'm Alex's girlfriend. How may we help you today?" I fold my arms across my chest and keep a friendly, innocent look on my face. "Is there anything we can do for you?"

"We're just going to look around, ask you and Mr. Karev a few questions and then we'd like to speak with the child..." His voice trails off and his eyes begin to wander so I know that he's about to say something else…and I can almost mouth along the next part of his dialogue because I already know what he's about to say next. "Speaking of the child…may I ask where she is?" He's looking around with a suspicious look on his face. "Detective Mason will question the child whilst I question Mr. Karev."

"Lyla's in the living room eating her dinner and watching a movie on the television. She's recovering from surgery so she's not feeling very well but she should be alright enough to answer a few questions." I rest my hand on Alex's shoulder and give it a gentle squeeze. The only indication that he's even alive right now is the fact that he just blinked. The male social worker sits down in the chair across from Alex and begins to open up his briefcase while the female circles around the kitchen, looking around like she's trying to find something that went missing. She's examining the walls, the cabinets, the drawers…she even opens up the refrigerator. Alex's eyes follow the woman around and when she gets to the fridge, his face drains completely of any color and he looks like he saw a ghost. I understand why he looks like that right now because in all honesty, I want to do the same thing. What the hell are they looking in the fridge for? I take a deep breath and keep my composure though. "Can I ask what this is about?" I play stupid, acting as though we have no idea why they would come to the house. Ignorance is bliss at times like this.

"When there are allegations made, it becomes our duty to step in and assure that a child is not in harm's way. Allegations have been made here and that is why we're here right now." The man opens up his briefcase and takes out a yellow folder. He closes the briefcase and takes a stack of papers from the folder. "There have been allegations of…Physical abuse, sexual abuse, inadequate feeding, neglect and exploitation…all concerning Lyla Isabella Karev, a minor child aged four years, born on July 15th of 2011 and in the custody of Alexander Michael Karev, her biological father." He's reading straight off a piece of paper. "According to a complaint issued by the child's paternal grandmother, she observed bruising to the child's head, face and neck on the afternoon of June 12th; all documented by these pictures here." He takes a white envelope out of the yellow folder and tears it open, revealing a whole slew of pictures. Slowly, Alex sifts through the pictures in the envelope. "Can you tell me, in your own words, what caused these injuries?"

Alex just keeps staring at the pictures, blank and emotionless. I'll admit that the bruises on Lyla's face in the picture look really bad. Her eye is purple and swollen, her cheek is yellowed and bruised and her lip is split. It looks like someone took a fist and punched her square in her face but I know Alex and I know that he wouldn't do that to his daughter. There's a perfectly logical explanation to the bruises. "…I…" Alex starts to speak but his voice cracks, which makes him stop to regroup himself before he starts talking again. "She was jumping on the couch…and I had told her to sit down and watch TV. She did…but I went into the kitchen to defrost a package of chicken for dinner that night. Next thing I know, she's crying. I rushed back into the living room and she was…she was laying on the floor, holding her face and crying. She had fallen off the couch and clipped her face on the side of my wooden coffee table. Her tooth bit down on her lip when she hit and that's how her lip got split. She banged her eye and her cheek off the table." He aggressively pushes the pictures away and sighs. "I didn't hit her." He shakes his head.

The detective stops writing once Alex is done explaining. He pushes the "stop" button on his voice recorder and nods his head. "Assuming your statement is true, have you taken action to prevent such an incident from occurring again? In other words, what if your daughter was jumping on the couch again and fell off once more? Have you taken proper precautions of avoid injury?"

"I moved the damn coffee table. It's not so close to my couch anymore, if that's what you mean." I can tell that Alex is getting a little fired up but that's to be expected when people come into your house and accuse you of harming your baby. Underneath the table, I put my hand on his kneecap for support. "I didn't hit my daughter. I've never hit my daughter. I don't spank her, I don't tap her hands…when I need to discipline her, I put her in timeout. I don't spank her and I would never hit her."

The detective nods his head again and pushes the "play" button. "According to a second complaint issued by the child's paternal grandmother, on the night of June 12th, she observed…what she called 'unusual behavior' of a sexual manner. This occurred when she witnessed Mr. Karev changing the child's soiled diaper. He allegedly wiped the child's vaginal area repeatedly, occasionally looking to ensure the child was completely clean. The complaint stressed that this was unusual, considering that the child had only urinated and should have been properly toilet trained at this point. In addition to this complaint, the paternal grandmother filed an additional complaint on the evening of August 3rd. This complaint reports that the grandmother observed abrasions and red marks to the child's buttocks while visiting the child on the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of Pensacola Children's Hospital…documented by pictures here." He produces another envelope of pictures. "Can you explain this in your own words, Mr. Karev?"

As soon as Alex tears open the envelope and sees the pictures of the red marks on Lyla's butt, he closes his eyes and takes a very deep breath. His mom is sneaky and underhanded because neither one of us even knew that she was taking these pictures. I left her in the room with Lyla for no more than five minutes while I calmed Alex down. It was FIVE minutes and she took these pictures? I see one single tear trickle down Alex's cheek but he brushes it off and regains control of himself. "First of all, my daughter is not toilet trained. This does not make me a negligent father, it only makes my daughter a grieving child. My wife and her mother died not too long ago and we're both still healing from that. My wife had my daughter toilet trained before she passed but after her death, my daughter regressed. She began taking pacifiers again, using the bathroom on herself and she stopped talking. I took her to three different doctors and they all told me that she was just grieving the loss of her mother and she was diagnosed with selective mutism. It's just the way she copes. So for one, my daughter is not toilet trained but she is NOT in diapers. She's in training pants, not actual baby diapers. I wiped her even though she only urinated because I'm a Pediatrician and I know the risks of not properly cleaning a child's private areas. She needed to be wiped, despite what time of secretions she made." Alex clears his throat. "As far as the marks on her backside…" He sighs. "We've been working on toilet training her so she can begin preschool at the end of the month and she's doing well with it. She didn't have an adapter on the toilet she went to the bathroom on and she scooted too far back and she ended up falling in. That's what caused the marks on her butt…nothing sexual that I did."

I can tell that it's really hurting Alex deeply to have to explain to these strangers that he's not sexually molesting or physically abusing his daughter. I feel so bad. I wish there was something I could do to ease his pain. "Explain to me about this ear surgery your daughter had to have." The man flips the page to the next complaint. I'm generally very good at reading people and knowing what they're thinking just by certain looks on their faces, and I'm starting to think that this detective believes Alex. His eyes are softer and his tone isn't as accusatory as it was for the first two complaints that he explained to us. In fact, he doesn't even brief us on the next complaint. He just asks Alex to politely explain it. "Tell me what the procedure was and what caused it." He even turns off the recording device.

"Towards the beginning of June, my daughter came down with a bad ear infection. I'm a Pediatrician like I said, so I took it upon myself to treat her. It was a simple ear infection and I treated it with a round of Amoxicillin. She felt better within five days and everything was fine. The infection was deeper than I thought, however, and we took a trip to Disney World for her birthday. The infection wasn't properly healed and she went swimming while in Disney, which prompted another infection. The infection on top of the one that wasn't previously healed got deep enough to her bone and caused an infection in the bone called 'Mastoiditis.' She needed to have a surgery to clean out the infection and that's just what she had done. Her doctor installed a ventilation tube in her ear to help drain future infections better. I treated her myself for the ear infection. I'm not negligent and I don't neglect to give my daughter healthcare when she needs it. It's a simple mistake that any doctor could have made."

"And there's a report saying that you don't feed her breakfast and lunch, only dinner….and for dinner, she eats takeout five out of seven days a week. Any truth to that?" He flips to the next complaint.

"No." Alex shakes his head. "Lyla wakes up every morning between the hours of 8:00 and 10:00. As soon as she wakes up in the morning, I ask her what she wants for breakfast. She usually eats cereal, waffles or pancakes…sometimes she'll eat eggs but she doesn't really like eggs too much so I don't give them to her much. I feed her lunch somewhere around 11:00 and she takes a nap after lunch until 1:30 or 2:00. I feed her dinner every single night. We do eat a bit of takeout here and there but she never goes more than a day or two without a home cooked meal. There's no truth to any of that. You can ask her yourself." I can hear the tears in his voice. He's really shaken up about all of this.

"The last complaint states that you exploit your daughter. Says that you quote, 'parade her around town', letting men and women alike make inappropriate comments about her and you do nothing to stop the comments…says that you even encourage the comments. Any of that true?" He closes the folder after he asks him about the final complaint.

"…Have you seen my daughter?" Alex's tone is very defensive. I think this complaint is the one that's hurt him the most. "She's beautiful." He shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head at the same time, clearly about to break down and cry. "She's beautiful, that's my baby. And no matter what I do…if I take her to the store, to the beach, to the gas station, to my job, for a walk, to sign her up for freaking preschool…somebody always has to comment on how cute she is. I don't see anything wrong with that. They tell me all the time that I've got a beautiful daughter. How is that wrong? It's not like people make sexual comments towards her. They usually just tell me how cute, adorable, pretty, gorgeous or beautiful she is. They don't ever say anything heinous, sexual or inappropriate. If they did, I'd be in jail." He sighs hard again. "Look man, I'm not saying that I've been the perfect dad but I'm telling you…my daughter is safe and happy here."

"…Very nice, Mr. Karev." The social worker nods his head slowly, indicating that he truly believes that Alex is a good dad. See, I told you. Anyone with eyes can see that Alex is an amazing father. It doesn't take much to notice that Alex is a good dad. "I just have a few more questions to ask you." Alex holds his head in his hands and takes another deep breath. "Look, Mr. Karev…I don't wanna lie to you." The man's voice turns from strictly business to completely soft. "I've been doing this for a long time and I've become pretty efficient at seeking out the good families from the bad ones. I know an unfit home and an unfit parent when I see one and off the record, I know that this is far from one of the cases in which a child deserves to be removed. But when allegations are made, it's my job to ensure that they are taken seriously…and child molestation is one of the big ones. We don't take that lightly." Alex nods his head in understanding. "So just answer the last bit of questions I've got for you and I'll talk to Detective Mason and we'll decide how to proceed from there." Alex nods again. "What's your profession?"

"I'm a Pediatric surgery attending…at Pensacola Children's." Alex does a bang-up job at trying to pull himself together.

"And how much do you make annually? What's your salary like?" He begins to write things down on a sheet of paper again. "It can be a rough estimate; it doesn't have to be totally accurate."

"Somewhere around 400…" He mumbles but stops, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling to think. "…No less than $400,000 but no more than $500,000. It's somewhere between there." My eyes widen when he shoots out that number. He makes somewhere between $400,000-$500,000 a YEAR?! The mathematician in my brain starts working and if my calculations are correct, he makes somewhere between $33,000 and $41,000 a month. A MONTH. He's freaking LOADED. I had no idea…he doesn't act like he makes that much money! No wonder he was able to drop a few grand on Disney World like it was nothing. He's freaking paid. My boyfriend is PAID. Oh my god. To say that I'm shocked would be the understatement of the year.

"And in your house…it's you, Lyla and Ms. Wilson?" He looks up from the papers.

"No, Jo doesn't live with me." Alex shakes her head. "She's um…she's got her own stuff." He turns his head toward me.

I lick my lips and speak up. "I live down the street. I waitress at a local restaurant and I watch Lyla for Alex while he's at work from time to time."

"And how is the child's relationship with you?" Detective Baker turns his attention to me now.

"Jo's more like a stepmother to Lyla." Alex takes the initiative to explain our relationship to the detective instead, so I just sit back and let him. "They do everything together, pretty much. My daughter adores her and she adores my daughter. They have a very mother-daughter type of bond." I smile just slightly over hearing Alex say that about me and Lyla but the smile is short-lived. They're trying to take Lyla away…there's not much to smile about right now.

"Is there sexual physical contact going on around the child?"

"We don't have a sexual relationship." I speak up this time. "We've been dating for…" I pretend to be thinking about an exact date when in reality, I'm trying to decide whether I should lie and say we've been together longer or not. I don't know if they'd deem Alex as unfit if they knew he's letting me, a woman he's only known for three months, around his daughter. "We've been dating for a little more than six months…" I see Alex's eyebrows wrinkle and very discreetly, under the table, I nudge him to let him know that he should play along. "And our relationship is not sexual at this point in time. We've had sexual contact but no sexual intercourse and every time we've done sexual things, we've been at my house." I explain.

He writes that down and nods his head for the millionth time. "That concludes the interview portion of our visit." He starts stuffing all the papers back into the folder and packing his briefcase back up. He must not have been lying when he said that they've been doing this for a long time because their timing is impeccable. Just as he finishes interviewing Alex, the lady social worker walks back into the kitchen and she looks happy but I can see in her eyes that there's something else that's bothering her. I'm just that good at reading people's faces and their energies. "What did you observe, Mason?" The man stands up from his chair after he finishes backing his briefcase back up and starts walking towards the woman.

"Just as they reported, the child was on the couch eating pizza for dinner. She appears to be well-fed, bathed, properly dressed, clean and cared for. She was pretty compliant…a little shy but as to be expected for having to talk to a stranger." I'm surprised that they're not even trying to hide their findings from me and Alex. Maybe it means that they're not going to take Lyla and they're fixing to close the case after all. "The house seems suitable for a child her age. I examined every room and found no traces of mold, dirt, feces, urine. I examined the child's bedroom and it seems as though she has clean sleeping arrangements, ample toys for play and proper child stimulation. I found no evidence of abuse, physical nor sexual while talking to the child. There's adequate food in the refrigerator, soap and running water and working electricity. I examined the wound behind the child's ear and it's clean and properly dressed. Everything seems to be in tip-top shape around here. I see no immediate danger." Well if she sees no immediate danger, then why doesn't she seem happier about this? She seems like she was dreading telling us that Lyla's perfectly healthy and happy.

"And the father has perfect alibis, seems to be loving and attentive…" The man seems upset all of a sudden too. "I hate cases like this." He mumbles so low that only the worker was supposed to hear him but I heard every single thing he said. He said that he hates cases like these…cases like what though? The two of them huddle and whisper amongst themselves for a few moments, which honestly doesn't set right with me. I glance over to my left so I can look at Alex and he's a lot better than he was at first. At first, he was blank, expressionless, emotionless and physically unresponsive because he was in shock. Right now, he's breathing perfectly fine and he's reactive. I can still see that he's preoccupied and worried but it's not as bad as it was. I reach underneath the table and grab his hand. I stroke his knuckles and try my best to comfort him. Something tells me that he won't be totally calm until these people are out of his house and leaving him alone. "What about the girlfriend?" I hear the man whisper but I can't hear anything after that. All I see is the woman shake her head "no". I squeeze Alex's hand. He's not paying attention to anything the social workers are talking about. He's just staring dead ahead, deep in thought. Finally, the social workers are done talking. They disperse from their huddle and turn back around to face the both of us…and I don't like the looks on their face.

"…So what?" To my surprise, Alex snaps out of his trance and speaks up first. "More investigations? More questions to answer? Are you gonna give me a court date?" He sounds so hurt. But if the looks on the detectives' faces are any indication of what I think they're about to say next, Alex is about to be beyond hurt. "Tell me what's next." He persists. They look at him with the most heartbreaking looks on their faces…so maybe Alex wants to retract his statement. I don't think he wants to know what's next.

"Mr. Karev…" The woman takes a step towards Alex and turns her "strictly business" voice back on. I squeeze Alex's hand because I'm pretty sure I know what's coming next and he…he has no idea. "Our investigation here is only half the battle. Although the investigation we conducted today found that the child is in no eminent danger…as child youth advocates, it is our responsibility to take every allegation and accusation seriously. And there are two reports of child molestation and one report for child abuse, which are two of the most serious allegations that can be made. And the pictures provided with the complaints…although the abuse allegations were explained, we cannot declare them as unfounded until a more thorough, in-court, police investigation is conducted. It is our job to act in the best interest for the child and for that reason…

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

…it is within the child's best interest to remove her from the home until these allegations can be further investigated. She's going to have to come with us right now." I'm honestly not sure if I heard her right. I think I heard her say that they need to take Lyla with them right now…. I really don't think I heard her right though. They can't just take her away from me when I've done nothing wrong. They can't do this to me. "We're going to allow a few moments for you to pack a few of her belongings and say goodbye but it is imperative that the child is in our custody once we leave this house." I heard her right. She wants me to somehow pack some of my daughter's things and tell her that she has to go away? I can't do that. What kind of person do they think I am? I haven't done anything wrong. They can't take her away when I've done nothing wrong. This isn't right.

"…You can't do that though." I'm having an out-of-body experience. It's like I'm watching everything fall into place from outside of my body. Like I'm standing over by the garbage can, watching my jaw tremble, hearing my own voice crack and watching Jo try her best to hug me. All of this is happening to the Alex sitting at my kitchen table. It's not actually happening to me. "I didn't do anything. I didn't touch my daughter, I never hit her, I don't do anything my mom's accusing me of. I didn't do anything." I hear Jo whisper my name as my hands clasp over my eyes. I feel like my heart was just ripped out of my chest and that's honestly the only way I can describe my feelings at the moment. I feel…I feel numb. Like someone stabbed me with a million needles and injected novacane all across my body to take the feeling out…and the only thing I'm feeling is the achiness deep in my chest. My throat is closing up and my heart is hurting so bad that my stomach is beginning to churn. All I can do is pray that these tears stop falling but my hands are soaking wet and there's no hope; so basically all I can do is cry. "Please don't take her. Can't you like…bend the rules or something?" I take my hands away from my eyes. Normally, I wouldn't dare let these strangers plus Jo see me sobbing like this but this isn't a normal circumstance. Nothing about this is normal. I'm not even myself anymore. I don't know who I am.

"Alex…" Jo whispers my name again and wraps her skinny little arms around my shoulders. I push her away though. There's nothing she can do right now that'll make me feel alright. Unless there's something she can do to make this okay…something she can do to make them change their minds and leave my daughter in my care…then there's nothing she can do for me. I don't need to be held or hugged or comforted. I CAN'T be comforted. Why is this happening to me? Why is my life falling apart? Why do I lose my wife and now my child? They're going to take her and I have no idea when I'm going to get her back. I work with mistreated children on a daily basis and I've seen what CPS workers do. They take the kid away from the parents. If they're an older child, they go to a group home and if they're younger, they go into a foster home. Lyla would be considered younger, so she's going to a foster home. It takes so long to get your kids back once CPS takes them. Lyla's going to be away from me at least until the court hearing and I have no idea when that's going to be because I don't even have a hearing date yet. "Alex, it's okay…" Jo tries hugging me again.

I put my hand against her chest and give her a nice, hard shove. "Get off me, Jo." I mumble. I have to do something about this. They really can't take her away from me. She needs me. I scoot out from the chair, pull myself together and stand up. "You can't take her. I haven't done anything wrong, she's not in danger and she really needs me. She needs me. She already lost her mother and if you take her away from me, she'll…she'll really just…" My vision starts to blur again. "Please just bend the rules. Please don't take her away from me. She's all I have left."

"Unfortunately, we're after the best interest of the child and not the best interest of the parent, Mr. Karev." The man starts talking to me now and if he knew what was good for him, he'd shut up. I won't hit the woman but I'll shove him into the wall and break his fucking neck if he doesn't shut up. "We realize—"

"Oh shut the hell up." I snap at him. "If you knew your ass from your earlobe, you'd know a crazy old bitter bitch making up false accusations when you've seen one. You don't know shit." The hurt has been completely washed away from my body and it's been replaced with sheer hatred and pure anger towards these people. "If you were really out for the best interest of my daughter, you'd know that it's best for her to be with ME. I'm a…I'm not perfect, but I'm a damn good father. She's taken care of. I did NOTHING wrong. You people can't just walk in here and take my kid based off something you can't prove! I didn't do anything! This is all crap! You people can't just let someone be happy! She's happy and she's healthy and she's thriving! I would never hurt my daughter! I work with a million kids in a day! If I was going to molest a kid, why wouldn't I pick one of them?! Why would I hurt my own daughter!? This is BULLSHIT."

"Daddy?" She peeks her head around the corner and looks into the kitchen. She has pizza sauce all over her cheeks, half of her hair is up in a messy little bun that Jo put in her hair and the other half of it is strung all across her head. She's wearing the same white t-shirt I stuck her in after her bath earlier and she has on a pair of pink flannel pajama pants. I can tell just by looking at her that she's still not feeling well. That's my daughter, man…my baby. I was there when she came out of the womb, came home from the hospital. I used to shake her bottles and wipe her puke off my shirt. I was hardly there for her during her first few years of life, but I swear to god I love her. I don't deserve someone as precious and beautiful as her in my life but I swear to god I take care of her. I would never in a million years put her in harm's way. I would die if it meant that she didn't have to feel one ounce of pain ever again in her life. She's my daughter. She's all I have in this world and I'm all she has too. How can they just take her? "Daddy, the…" She innocently toddles into the kitchen and looks around. "The moobie is over…"

"No baby, come with me. Don't come in here." Jo hurries over to her and scoops her up. As if she's trying to protect her from everything that's going on in this kitchen, Jo puts her hand on the back of Lyla's head and carries her out of the kitchen. But as I've said a million times before, my daughter is very smart and she can sense that something's wrong.

"PUH ME DOWN, JOEDOE!" She screams. "DADDY!" I'm guessing that Jo lost the battle between her and Lyla, because just as quickly as Jo forced her to leave, Lyla's rounding the corner again and coming back into the kitchen. "Daddy…what goin' on?"

"Lyla honey…" The female social worker kneels down on the floor in front of Lyla and holds her hands. "Remember what we talked about in the living room?"

"But I sayed…I sayed daddy didn't do nuffin." Instead of looking the social worker in her face, Lyla turns her head and looks at me. "Him no hit me… I falled down. Him no make me scared when I get baths or nuffin. Him no do nuffin…" Her eyes are welling up with tears and it's breaking my heart. They can't do this to us. "Daddy tell her. Tell her you no do nuffin." I can't even open my mouth. I can't say anything to her. How do I tell her that it's possible for two strangers to come in and yank her out of the only home she ever knew? "Tell her daddy!"

"Sweetheart…" The woman rubs her arms. "You have to go away for a little while. You have to come with me. I'm gonna take you to a nice new home until your daddy can have you back. Remember what I told you in the living room? I told you that you might have to go away for a little while, didn't I? It won't be so bad. You just have to go away for a little while until we can figure all of this out."

"I no wanna go!" She looks at me again. "You no want me anymore? But daddy…" She's trying to rip out of the social worker's grasp but she can't. "You no want me anymore, daddy? I'm sowwy. I go pee pee on the potty and everyfing. I no be bad no more and I pwomise I be good. I no jump on the couch, kay? I eat bwoccoli and I go to pweschool and I stop bein' bad. I be so good…no make me go. No...pease want me daddy…"

I push the social worker away and pick my daughter up. "No sweetness, it's not that. Don't ever think that I don't want you. I love you so much, okay?" I wrap my arms around her and give her a long, much-needed hug. "It's nothing you did, okay? So don't go thinking that. Don't go thinking that I don't love you and I don't want you because you did something bad. It's my fault, alright? Daddy's a big idiot, that's why. It's not your fault. It's not your fault." I'm trying so hard not to cry. I want her to see that I'm being strong about this. I'm really not though. I'm falling apart at the seams and I'm half a second away from breaking completely down but if she sees that I'm being strong about this, maybe she'll be strong too. "Ly, I promise…" I sit her down on the counter so we can look at each other. She looks at me with tears in her pretty little eyes. "I promise that I'm gonna make this all better, okay? I'm gonna make this all better. And when I make it better, you're gonna come home. And we're gonna make a big tent and we're gonna watch movies in it and eat ice cream and popcorn…I promise. I promise I'm gonna make this better. But right now, I want you to be a good girl…and a big girl. You gotta be really brave, okay? Real brave. Like you were when you got the stuff in the hospital that made you sleepy. You gotta be so, so, so brave. We're gonna go upstairs and get some of your stuff to make it fun at your new house, alright? You gotta be brave for me…"

"Pease don't make me go!" She throws her arms around me. "I want my daddy…" I close my eyes and try to fight off a whole slew of tears. I can't believe they think this is in the best interest of her. "But daddy, I love you…I can't go." Hearing her say that she loves me makes me lose all control. I pick her up again and hold her. They can't do this. Silent tears are trickling out of my eyes. I sniff and kiss her pizza-covered cheeks. They can't do this to me…to her. I didn't do anything. How could this possibly be in her best interest? Ripping her from her home, from me. No… we were just eating pizza. We were eating pizza and watching Dolphin Tale. This isn't right. This can't be happening. "Pease let me stay, daddy…pease. I won't sing no more. I won't sing Tayla Swiff no more. I pwomise I pwomise I don't even like that song no more."

"It's nothing that you did, Ly…alright? It's nothing you did." I swear to god if I had known that these people were coming to take her off of me today, I would've packed up and left with her. I don't know where the hell I would've gone but I would've left. I would've taken her and been so far out of Millerton. I pick her up off the counter and put her on my hip. I don't want the CPS workers to give me a negative review or whatever so I'd better go and pack her stuff.

I can't believe this is happening…

 **X X X**

"Alex…" Jo kneels down on the floor next to me and quietly says my name. I wonder if it's too much to ask her to leave me alone again. She tried comforting me after they literally dragged my little girl out of my house and I snapped at her and told her to go the hell away. That was two hours ago. Damn, that was two hours. I've been sitting here on this linoleum floor for two hours. I can't get her cries out of my head and I keep replaying the scene over and over again in my head, thinking about what I could've done differently. The social worker gave her the liberty of walking out of the house on her own. After I went upstairs and packed her clothes, her toys and some of her pull-ups, I brought her back downstairs and it was time for them to take her. The social worker took her hand and led her out the front door, but Lyla ripped away from her and held onto my leg, begging me to let her stay. She cried, screamed…told them that she didn't want to leave her daddy. The woman had to pry her off of my leg and carry her out the door. They very literally RIPPED my daughter out of my arms and took her away. She screamed the entire way out the door, kicked her feet and screamed my name. It sounded like someone was kidnapping her and I guess…in all sense of the word…they did. They kidnapped her from me. I did a very good job of keeping it all together until they took her away. I didn't cry while packing her stuff and I didn't cry when she was holding onto my leg. But the second the door closed, it all hit me. Lyla doesn't live with me anymore. They took my daughter away. It all hit me and my legs gave out and I've been in this position ever since.

My back is slumped against the wall, my knees are bent and pulled up into my chest and my hands are holding my t-shirt over my face. I thought I was going to end up crying myself to sleep but when I actually started to fall asleep, the vision of my daughter—red faced and crying—kicking and screaming for me as they shoved her in the back of the car ran through my mind and I just couldn't fall asleep so I gave up. There have been a million things running through my mind since I've been sitting here. First and foremost, I've just been thinking about the time Jenna and I brought her home from the hospital…

" _Support her head…" Jenna whispers to me as she passes the baby off to me. She wants to go take a shower and that means that I have to look after the baby while she's upstairs. I can watch TV while holding the baby. I turned on the baseball game and since the baby's sleeping, I can watch it while I hold her. "There you go…" She kisses me on the cheek before she turns to head up the steps. The game's on a commercial right now, so I take the free moment to actually catch a glimpse at the kid. We waited until the birth to find out the gender and I gotta be honest…I'm still a little pissed. I wanted a boy so bad. I wanted an Alex Jr. SO bad. But no…I got stuck with a Lyla. What kind of name is that anyway? Jenna has some sick obsession with that TV show, Friday Night Lights, right? And her favorite character is named Lyla Garrity, I guess. That's where she got the name. I think the name is gross but it wasn't my decision. I got to pick the name if it was a boy and she got to pick the name if it was a girl. Lyla…sounds like a stripper name, I think. It's one letter away from "Lola"…like Lola Bunny, the slut rabbit that Bugs Bunny likes. We should've had a boy._

 _While I'm looking at her, she wrinkles her nose up and makes a noise that's crossed between a grunt and a whine. "Hey…don't you start crying." I touch her hand. "I'm serious. If you start crying, I'll make sure you get cold bottles for a week. It's the seventh inning and we're down by one, one out and runners on first and third... So if you start crying, I'm gonna have to punish you somehow…" She makes another noise so I rub her butt a little bit because that always seems to help babies out. "Shhh." I lean down and put my lips to her soft forehead. She's actually kind of…pretty, I guess. She's got Jenna's eye shape and my nose, my mouth and my chin. She has a bunch of black hair on top of her head, but I think she's going to end up having light brown hair because she has a little brown patch towards the back of her head. She's really pretty, actually. So pretty that a smile actually crosses my face. "I should invest in a shotgun…because if any boys come around you, I swear to god…" I slip my finger into the palm of her hand and she squeezes it. "…I love you too." I bring her hand up to my mouth and kiss it. The game is back on, but I don't really feel like looking away from her to watch it. I kind of just want to admire her beauty. She looks like a Lyla…she's gonna be a knockout when she gets older and I'm gonna have to stash so many dead teenage boy bodies._

 _I guess it's not so bad not having an Alex Jr…_

I knew even then that she was just precious. I really wanted a little boy but I can't imagine anything different. I was meant to have a little girl. I was meant to have a pretty little girl that I can kill boys over. I was pretty much clueless as to what to do with a baby, but I knew even then that she was my most prized possession, the most precious thing I'd ever lay my hands on and the love of my life. I'd do anything in this world to protect her…anything in this world to go back to that day on the couch. I didn't get a chance to watch the end of the game but I was perfectly fine with watching my gorgeous baby girl sleep instead. I loved her then, I love her even more now. In addition to thinking about when Jenna and I brought her home from the hospital, I was thinking about the time she called me "Dada" for the first time.

" _Aaaaand Russell is taken down at the 30 yard line, with a 15 yard gain." I resist the urge to throw the remote at the TV. The Dolphins can't stop the Falcons' running game and we're gonna lose this fucking game because the offensive coordinator doesn't know how to call the proper damn play. I grit my teeth together and grab the beer off the coffee table. While I'm at it, I take a look down at the floor to make sure she's alright. Jenna went to the store about an hour ago and even though I was watching the game, she didn't want to take the baby with her because it's chilly outside. I call bullshit because first of all, it doesn't get chilly in Florida. She just didn't feel like strapping the baby in her car seat. But rather than listen to Jenna complain if I were to say no, I just told her that I'd watch her. She woke up from her nap right after Jenna left, so I was forced to lay a blanket down, stick a toy on the ground and put her in front of the TV to keep her out of my way._

" _Lyla…Lyla, get down." I wave my hand at her to get her out of my way. Ever since she learned how to pull herself up on stuff, she's been a pain in the ass. She just crawled over to the TV stand and used it to pull herself up. Now she's standing in front of the TV and smacking the screen. "LYLA! GET DOWN!" I yell at her. She's eleven months old; she knows what I mean when I say something to her. She turns her head towards me and looks at me like she has no idea what I'm talking about. Her green eyes are big, wide and innocent and she has slobber dripping down her chin. Her unruly brown hair is sticking up because I didn't fix it after she took her nap. "DOWN. NOW." I yell at her again. She closes her mouth, which makes more drool seep out._

 _She smacks the TV stand and flashes her two top and two bottom teeth at me. Her drool collects on the front of her light pink onesie and she bends her knees and bounces on her chubby legs. "Da da!" Did she just call me "Dada"? I think she did…hey…she called me "Dada"! She's never called me that before. I didn't even know she knew how to say that. "Da da!"_

 _It's kind of hard to be mad at her anymore after she just said that…I feel an overwhelming sense of pride wash over me. She called me dada…_

If someone would've told me then that I was going to lose her when she was four, I would've cherished that moment a little more. I would've turned off that TV, got on the floor with her and kissed her little lips when she called me dada. She called me dada…and now I just wish I could hear her call me "daddy" one more time. I really feel like I lost everything I ever cared about. I feel so hollow and empty without her. You know how some people say "they took a piece of my heart when they went away"? Well Lyla took my entire heart with her today. I feel like I have nothing left. I'm dead inside. "Alex…you should get up…" Jo grabs my arm and tries pulling on me. I just sniff and ignore her. I didn't even do anything wrong. I fed her, I bathed her, I cleaned up after her, I loved her…I never hit her or touched her inappropriately. I didn't do anything to deserve having her taken away from me. All I ever did was love her. I didn't do anything…and how she's gone. She's in someone else's house. They took her away from me. My mom made false accusations and got her taken away. I don't have anything left. I might as well just kill myself. I don't have anything else to live for anymore. I have nothing else left. "Alex, come on…you need to take a shower…" She tries pulling me up but Jo trying to lift me is like a grape trying to lift a cantaloupe…she's entirely too small. "Alex…"

I sniff and pull away from her. She needs to leave me alone. I don't want to get up. I don't want to get up, I don't want to take a shower…I don't even want to live anymore. What's the point? The only reason I kept going is gone and I don't know when I'm going to see her again. I don't know when I'm going to see her again, I don't know where she's at, I don't know if she's scared or cold or hurt. She's probably thinking I abandoned her. She's probably thinking that she's lost. She probably wishes she had me to hold her. Her ear is probably hurting and the people she's with won't be able to give her medicine like I can. I sent everything with her; her prescriptions, pain pills, everything…but she needs me. I don't know when I'm ever going to see her again. What if she forgets me? I gave her one of my watches. My silver and black one, my favorite one. I gave it to her because I don't want her to forget me but she's already forgetting Jenna so what if she meets her foster father and forgets me too? The social workers gave me a case plan but I can't start working on it until they examine the allegations further. A case plan is a list of things I have to do to get her back. If the allegations turn up true, I have to go through anger management classes, parenting classes, I'll have to register as a sex offender, complete this sex offender program and complete 20 hours of supervised visits before I can get my daughter back. If they turn up false, everything is nullified and I get my daughter back right away. But I still have to get a court date and get a preliminary hearing to see about how I plead and stuff like that and then I get the big court date where they'll give me a lie detector and stuff. So even still, Lyla's going to be in foster care for at least two months. I don't know how I'm gonna carry on for two months.

I don't understand how they can just come into my house, see that my daughter is happy, healthy, living in a safe environment…and still end up taking her away from me. I know the only reason they took her is because my mom took pictures. They have pictures of the bruising and pictures of the marks on her butt…which means that they have to treat it as if I really did punch her and molest her because the pictures are proof of what my mom is accusing me off and I have no proof besides my word and Lyla's word…and Lyla's word isn't good enough because I could've coached her to say that she fell and I didn't touch her. I know it looks bad but I swear I didn't do anything to my child. But she loves me. She was crying for me the entire way out the door. If I was molesting and abusing her, she wouldn't be crying for me like that. She'd be glad to get away from the man that was abusing her, right? I didn't even know about anything else that my mom was accusing me of. I didn't know she was accusing me of letting Lyla become malnourished, sexually exploiting her and neglecting her. None of those accusations are true. Everything is false. I just want my damn kid. I want everyone to leave me alone and let me have my daughter. We've been through enough with Jenna dying.

"Alex, please baby…get up." Jo tries pulling me again.

"Go away, Jo…go home. Leave me alone. Get out of my house." I throw an elbow at her and sigh. I need her to go away. I really need her to leave me alone right now. She puts her hand on my back and rubs. "I SAID GET OUT!"

"…I'm not leaving you." She whispers and keeps rubbing my back. "I'm here, okay? I'm not going anywhere…I'm right here."

"GO!"

"No." She remains calm. I sniff and finally take my shirt down over my face. I have to squint slightly once I'm exposed to the light again because for the last hour and a half now, my eyes have been underneath a black t-shirt, shaded from all light sources. I reluctantly pick myself up off the floor and grab Jo by her arm. I'm careful not to hurt her, but I'm also forceful. "Alex, don't…" She says. I pull her up off the ground and pull her towards the door. "I'm not going anywhere! I'm staying right here…I'm worried about you! I don't want you to do anything stupid!" I stop her in front of the door and point to it. I just want to be left alone. "No. I'm not leaving. I'll…I'll stay out of your way, I'll leave you alone but I'm not leaving this house." I roll my eyes and grab her around her waist. "Alex, stop!" I pick her up and throw her over my shoulder. "Stop it!" I open up the door. "STOP!" I step out onto the porch. "QUIT IT!" I put her down on the porch and let her go. "Alex, please stop! Talk to me! You never just talk to me anymore, we never just…" I disappear back into the house and shut the door in her face. "Alex!" She knocks on the door. "…Alex, don't do this to me!" I turn off the kitchen light so she catches my drift. "Alex!" I close all the blinds that she could possibly see through. "ALEX!" I walk back over to the spot on the floor I was sitting in and sit right back down. "…Alex…"

I don't know what part of leave me alone she doesn't understand. The only person I want to talk to right now is my pop and he's not even answering his phone. I called him five times about half an hour after they dragged Lyla out the house and he didn't answer. He won't answer and all I want is for him to tell me what to do because right now, all I really want to do is get in my car and drive it off the Pensacola Bridge. I don't want Jo. I want my pop…

And he won't answer.


	47. Betrayal

**A/N:** Things might be a little confusing right now so I'll clear things up a little before this chapter.

\- Lyla is in foster care as of right now. Alex is not allowed to know where she is at, nor is he allowed to see her until she is examined by a doctor and a psychologist to make sure no sexual or physical abuse actually happened. If her exams come back clean, Alex will be allowed supervised visits with her until the court hearing. If it comes back that she was abused, his parental rights will be terminated and he's not permitted to see her or have contact with her until after the hearing.

\- It could take anywhere from one week to four months for them to get a hearing date. Two months was just Alex's estimate based off what he's seen happen at his own job.

\- Sorry if I didn't make this clearer, but Lyla is NOT in Helen's custody. I don't know if any of you guys thought that, but I just wanted to make sure.

Sorry for any confusion!

* * *

"I'll see you tomorrow, Lucille." I plaster the fakest smile on my face and stuff my charge tips into my back pocket. Lucille waves at me, clearly eyeing me up as if she wants to ask me what exactly has been on my mind. She and Macy both made the comment today that I seem a little preoccupied but I just brushed it off and told them that I just wanted to work. Normally I would be super excited to clock out of work for the night, especially after having the kind of day I've had and even more so after being as exhausted as I am right now but truthfully, I'm dreading the fact that I get to go home. For the last two days, work has been my only saving grace. At least when I come here to work, my problems outside of this restaurant don't seem to follow me. As long as I'm within the four walls of this place, I'm safe, serene and for once; I'm sane. For once, I actually don't mind being at work. When I clock in to put in my eight hour shift, I know that for at least eight hours, I can breathe. I can breathe, I can forget, I can have my hands on problems that I can actually fix. At least for eight hours. I put my hands against the metal bar and push the door open. I didn't work outside today, so I haven't had the opportunity to feel just how hot, humid and muggy it is. As I'm thrust into the stuffy evening air, I reach in my back pocket and take out my car keys. Preoccupied doesn't even begin to cover exactly what I've been lately. I've been preoccupied, worried, stressed and saddened, all at the same time for the last four days and downright scared for the last three.

I unlock my car and climb into the driver's seat, totally dreading what I'm about to have to do. I'm not exactly sure how long it takes for a person to get used to something, but I thought that I would for sure be used to this by now. It's been the same thing for the last two days; you'd think I'd know what to expect by now. I already know what I'm going to do. I already know exactly what steps I'm going to take, what order I'm going to do those steps in and what the outcome is going to be. I already know all of these things. Still, I find myself absolutely detesting the fact that I'm about to go do this. I'm going to drive this car and instead of stopping in front of my own house, I'm going to drive the extra 30 seconds down the street and I'm going to park in the driveway behind his truck. I'm going to get the mail out of the mailbox, slide it through the tiny crack underneath his front door and knock. I'm going to knock for ten whole minutes, sit out on the porch and call his name. I'm going to try and twist the doorknob, only to find that it's locked. I'm going to walk around the porch and try my hardest to see through the closed blinds, being disappointed when I realize for the millionth time that it's impossible to do so. I'm going to call him three times, leave him a slew of voicemails that beg him to call me and let me know that he's okay but he's not going to call me back. I'm going to cry, try and kick the door down, get frustrated when I can't, assume that my boyfriend is in his house dead, cry some more and finally, take my ass home.

I'm not sure what I hate the most about this whole ordeal. I don't know if I hate him for closing me out, I don't know if I hate myself for being so desperate that I spend two hours outside his house, begging to be let in or if I just hate the world because unfair, screwed up things have to happen to the people that deserve it the least. I'm not sure which part of that is the worst, but I do know that it all comes in cycles. While I knock on the door and scream his name, I hate him for closing me out. I hate him for leaving me in the dark. While I twist the doorknob, I start to feel guilty for trying to belittle his grief because honestly, I totally understand why he would want to be left alone. And after the guilt wears off, I start to hate myself. I hate myself for begging, for being so desperate to hear that he's okay. I hate myself for not being more understanding, for not understanding that he just needs to be alone. I hate myself for assuming that he's done something stupid. I hate myself for getting worked up over the thought that he could be inside hanging from the shower rod or laying dead in his bedroom with his brains splattered all over the wall from a gunshot. I hate myself for not trusting that he wouldn't do something like that. I hate myself for not being able to do anything to fix this. And finally, when I pick up the phone and leave him the voicemails, I hate the world. I hate the world because Alex is arguably the best father in the entire universe and things like psycho mothers making false reports is enough to get somebody's child taken away. I hate the world because this is so unfair. I hate the world for not being able to understand why things like this have to happen to such amazing people.

I haven't seen him in three whole days. The last time I laid eyes on him was four days ago, when he forcibly kicked me out of his house and closed the blinds. I knew that he was grieving and going through something beyond my realm of understanding, so I respected that. I respected that and I left him alone. I walked down the street to my house and went to bed early that night. The next morning, I had to work so I didn't text or call him until my break. He didn't answer. So after I got off, I went down his house, thus beginning my ritual of knocking, screaming, checking his mail, crying and calling. Again, I figured that he just needed some space and I gave it to him. Yesterday, I worked the morning shift again and I tried calling him on my break for a second time. He didn't answer so again, I went to his house and picked up with my ritual. Today hasn't been any different so far. I worked the morning shift, I called him on my break and now I'm on my way to his house; hoping that something is different but knowing that nothing will be. I'm really trying to believe that Alex has more sense than to go off and kill himself but I refuse to believe that he'd just shut me out for three days without an explanation unless something's really wrong. I know he lost his daughter and I'm really not trying to diminish his feelings because he has every single right to be upset, distraught and hurt. I just wish he'd let me be there for him.

I'm not trying to make this about myself in any way, shape or form but I just hate that there's nothing I can do. I hate feeling so powerless. I hate that Alex won't let me support him and more than that, I hate that there's nothing I can do to ease his pain. I've been thinking and thinking and thinking and I've got nothing. The only thing I could do to make him feel any better right now is somehow get Lyla back and I have no idea where they took her. I know she's in a foster home right now, because she's too little to be in a group home. As they were taking her out of the house four days ago, they explained that much. They explained that she was going to be placed in an emergency foster home because they don't let children her age to into group homes. Alex isn't allowed to know where she's at so they wouldn't tell us where her foster home was going to be. Alex isn't allowed to have contact with her until they get her physically examined by a doctor. She has to be looked at and if—and ONLY if—the examination comes back clean, he can petition CPS to have supervised visits with her until the court hearing to determine everything about custody. This was never supposed to be anything more than a custody battle between him and his mother, but since she reported things to CPS, it's become much more than that.

I halfheartedly park my car in Alex's driveway and sigh as I take the keys out of the ignition. I get out of the car and as usual, I walk up onto his porch. I go over to his mailbox and open it up. I grab the stack of envelopes out of there, which indicates to me that once again, he hasn't been outside of his house today. If he had been, he would've grabbed the mail. I fling open his screen door and knock on the wooden one. "…Alex." I start with the normal routine of calling his name. "Alex…it's me again." I sigh and raise myself up on my tiptoes so I can see through the small window that's towards the top of his front door. I can't see anything through it so like I've been doing for the last two days, I kneel down on the flooring of his porch and start stuffing the envelopes underneath his front door. I think I've settled into quite the routine, because I'm moving a lot faster than I usually do. I just know everything that I'm going to do before I even do it so there's no sense in prolonging anything. I already know how things are going to end. I won't even bother calling his cell phone this time. "Alright Alex…I'm leaving." I sigh and close his screen door again so I can just be on my way.

Instead of just running back to my car though, I saunter over and sit down on the swing hanging from his ceiling. I just wish that he'd talk to me. I just want to know that he's alright. I don't want to believe that he hurt himself in any kind of way. I want to believe that Alex is smart enough to know that he still has his daughter to live for. Even if she's not currently in his custody, she's still worth living for. Because it's not like he's never going to get Lyla back. It'll be a while before he's able to but eventually, he will get her back. He still has her to live for…and I just hope he's smart enough to realize that. I really want to believe that he's just not answering me because he doesn't want to. I really hope that he's not answering me because he wants to. I don't want him to be not answering me because he's dead somewhere. Again, I'm really not trying to make this about me but honestly, I don't think I'll be okay if it turns out that Alex did do something stupid. I never thought that I was going to be okay again after Mark died but somehow, I found the strength to be happy again. If I lose Alex…I don't think I'll recover from that.

I don't believe in God, nor do I identify with a particular religion, but I think it's time I start praying to whatever's up there in the sky to make him alright. I don't believe that praying works and I really don't believe that talking to some kind of unseen entity up in the sky that you can't prove exists can somehow cure all the evils in the world but I don't know what else to do. I'm at my wit's end. And I'm not one of those pitiful, pathetic girls that don't know how to accept the fact that they've been broken up with. It's just that I haven't heard from him in a very long time and I'm scared now. If he were to text me or call me or whatever and tell me that he's breaking up with me, I would be perfectly okay. I'd be heartbroken, horribly upset but I would respect his decision and accept it. But as far as I'm concerned, he's still my boyfriend and he's going through a hard time and he won't let me be there for him and I haven't laid eyes on him in days. He hasn't broken up with me and I damn sure haven't broken up with him. We're still together…unless ignoring me is his own way of breaking up with me.

No, Alex wouldn't do that to me. I know he's not exactly in his right state of mind right now, but I still refuse to believe that he'd do something like that to me. He would at least let me know if he was breaking it off with me. I don't know much about Alex, but I do know that he doesn't seem like the kind that would just leave a girl hanging. Maybe I just need to give him a week. I've only given him four days. Maybe a week will do the trick. Maybe a week is as long as he needs to finally be okay. After a week, if I still haven't heard from him, I think I might call someone. I called his dad the day Lyla got taken. I found his number in Alex's phone and called him. Maybe I was a bit intrusive by going through his phone, but I just felt like his dad needed to know. Alex wasn't in the right mental state to call him himself so I just did it instead. I called him and told him that CPS just left and they took Lyla with them. I think he might've cried but I'm not sure. He asked to speak to Alex but Alex still wasn't up for talking at the time so I told him that I would have Alex call him later.

It took Alex about an hour and a half to settle down enough to call his father and when he did call him, he didn't answer. I'm not entirely sure why Jimmy didn't answer when Alex called him, but I found that to be strange. I was actually expecting him to come over but he didn't. He didn't call Alex, he didn't come over to see if he was okay…he did nothing. That's unusual because Alex and his dad are pretty close. The more time I spend thinking about it, the more I believe that his dad had something to do with this. I mean, why else wouldn't he be calling his son and coming over to visit him? I'm starting to wonder if maybe Jimmy was instrumental in getting Lyla taken away too. Like maybe he was just remaining close with Alex so he could report back to his mom about everything that Alex could've possibly done wrong. That makes sense, doesn't it? I never thought his dad was that kind of person because every time I was around him, he seemed like a caring father, a good man and a doting grandfather but when it comes to things like this, you can never trust anyone. Besides…if Jimmy was all he cracked up to be, he would've been over here the second I called him to tell him that his granddaughter was just taken away and he would've answered the phone when his son called after something like this happened. Those are just my own suspicions. I could be wrong.

Anyway, it's Friday now and Alex has until Monday to show any signs of life either in his house or towards me. If I still haven't heard or seen anything from him on Monday, I'm going to call someone else…like maybe the police or something. I just want someone to go in there and make sure he's still alive. As long as he's still alive, I don't care. He can shut me out from now until eternity and I wouldn't care, as long as I know that he's not dead. I wouldn't judge him, nor would I blame him if he did feel the need to hurt himself. I know I was borderline crazy and totally suicidal after the doctors told me that Gabby was dead. I didn't even know my baby and I was heartbroken when she died. Granted, Lyla didn't die but I imagine the grief Alex is feeling is the same kind of grief I was feeling; maybe even a little bit worse. I mean, his baby is four. He had his baby for four years…four years. He had four years to fall in love with her and she's gone within a matter of an hour long visit with CPS. So even though Lyla didn't die, I'm going to go ahead and assume that Alex is feeling worse than I was. So if he felt the need to hurt himself over that, I don't blame him. But I really, really hope he didn't because Lyla IS still alive and he has a chance to get her back. I really just need to know that he's okay.

I fish my cell phone out of my pocket and unlock it. I go to my recent calls and scroll through the log for Jimmy's number. I still wholeheartedly believe that he had something to do with Lyla being taken away because his behavior has been all too suspicious, but I just want to know if he's heard anything from Alex. I just want to know if maybe he's spoken to Alex or seen him or anything like that. I'm just looking for any sign that he's okay, alive and well. I hold the phone to my ear and start swinging back and forth on the swing I'm sitting in. "Hullo?" He answers the phone on the fourth ring and by the sound of his voice, I'd say that he's busy with something. He sounds out of breath, distracted and disinterested. He definitely had something to do with it. It sounds like he's down working at the shop with how breathy his voice is and if he's able to get up and go to work while his granddaughter is sitting in a foster home somewhere, he's definitely guilty of something. I'd like to give him a piece of my mind. How could he do that to Alex? How could he betray him like that? That's his son. He knows what kind of father Alex is and he somehow played a part in getting Lyla taken away? How could he do that to his own son?

I put aside my sudden distaste for Jimmy and just open my mouth to talk. "Hey Jimmy, it's Jo…I'm sorry to bother you, but I was just wondering if you've heard anything from Alex lately? I just haven't seen or heard from him in three days and I'm a little bit worried. His mail's been piling up, his windows and blinds are shut and he won't answer my texts or calls. I'm worried that he might've done something to himself…so I was just wondering if you heard anything…anything to let me know that he's okay. I've been down his house for the last three days and I haven't heard anything. I'm just so worried."

"…He's okay." He coughs into the receiver and clears his throat. I feel this overwhelming sense of relief wash over me because he said that with so much confidence. "I haven't talked to him since Monday evening when I was gonna come over to visit, but…" And that sense of relief was just wiped away and replaced with the same feeling of worry that I've been battling for three days. If he hasn't spoken to him since Monday evening then how is he any better than me? I haven't seen or spoken to Alex since Monday either! How does he know that he's okay?! How could he give me false hope like that?! He's useless too! He has no idea if Alex is okay, he's just guessing. "I know he's okay and you shouldn't worry about him. I know my son. Alex is…he's strong. He wouldn't do anything rash. Just trust me when I say that he's alright. He just needs a moment to himself. He pushes everyone away when things like this happen…he just wants to be alone. But I'm telling you that he's alright."

"But…But you haven't spoken to him since Monday…" I remind him. He can't possibly be so sure if he hasn't heard anything from Alex in four days either. I'm willing to bet that this situation isn't like anything that Alex has ever experienced. Losing your child is something totally different than teenage angst or whatever else he's ever had to experience. I don't think Alex shutting people out this time is like any of the other times that he's done it. I think this time is totally different. "It's Friday…"

"No, I haven't heard anything from him since Monday but I've been with Alex for 30 years and I know what he can take. He's fine. He hasn't killed himself and he hasn't done anything stupid. He's absolutely fine Jo, I'm telling you this. Trust me, alright?" How could I trust you when you helped him get his daughter taken away? He helped get Lyla taken away, that's one thing I'm sure of. He's acting like it. He's staying away, acting guilty…he had something to do with it. I'm not sure what he had to do with it, but he had something to do with it and I'm sure of that. "Look Jo, I have to go. I'm telling you that Alex is fine and trust me on that. Don't call me anymore, okay? And don't tell Alex you talked to me. Got that? DON'T tell Alex you talked to me."

"…Why?" I know he's probably not going to tell me but I ask anyway. It's worth a shot, isn't it? I don't know. All I know is that he's making himself sound more and more suspicious by the moment. I'm not sure what part he played in having CPS come take Lyla away but he certainly played a part. I'm absolutely certain about that. "Why aren't we allowed to have contact?" His end of the phone is silent, so I pull my phone away from my ear to check and see if he hung up. My phone says that the call is still going on, so no…he hasn't hung up. But it's so quiet. "Jimmy? Just tell me…why can't I tell him that we talked? Why aren't you allowed to speak to me?"

"…I'm just sorry, Jo." And with that, he actually does hang up. I stare at my phone after he hangs up and bite my lip. Well this just goes to show you that you can't trust ANYONE…not even your family. He did everything with Alex and Lyla. He even came to Disney World for her birthday…he did all that for him and this whole time, he was in cahoots with his mother. He knows that I know. He knows that I know that he's partially responsible in some kind of way for all of this…that's why he told me that he's sorry. I shake my head and look up at the ceiling. Alright, well one thing I think I'm going to try and trust the traitor with is the way he said that he knows for a fact that Alex is okay. Maybe I'm just desperate for some kind of closure when it comes to Alex, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and believe Jimmy. If Alex truly is okay, then I'm going to continue to try and be there for him. Because if and when he comes out of this slump that he's in, he's going to need someone to be there for him. He's going to need someone there to pick up the pieces and that someone is going to be me.

I bring my head down from looking up at the ceiling and unlock my phone once again. If he truly is alright, he's going to get through this. This is just a rough patch but eventually, he will get Lyla back…and when he does, he's going to need a job to go back to. Maybe I'm wrong, but I highly doubt that he called his job and let them know what's going on. He's probably been not calling and not showing up and I don't know about the hospital, but most companies have a policy against "no call/no shows". I open up the internet on my phone and google "Pensacola Children's Hospital" to see if maybe I could find a number. I don't want to make Alex angry or anything so I won't tell too much. I won't tell them all the details about what's been going on. I'll just tell them that Alex is going through a rough patch and that they shouldn't fire him because he'll be alright in a little while. I just don't want him to lose his job over just a rough patch. Because things WILL get back to normal eventually. If the justice system prevails, they're going to recognize that Alex is the best possible thing in this world for his daughter and they're going to give her back and everything will be normal again. And when everything's normal, he's still going to need his job. I find the number to the hospital on their website and subsequently, I dial it.

The operator answers promptly on the second ring. "Pensacola Children's Hospital, this is Marge speaking, how may I help you?" She sounds happy and peppy which doesn't surprise me, considering that it's a children's hospital she works for.

"Can you connect me to the surgical wing?" I ask.

"Certainly, please hold one moment." The woman says just as she transfers my call over. The usual elevator music plays through the receiver as I wait. I don't remember what Alex's boss's last name is but I do know that her first name is Arizona. So if I ask them to connect me to Dr. Arizona, they'd probably know who I'm talking about. After all, how many people named "Arizona" could possibly work in that hospital? Suddenly, the music stops playing and another woman answers. "Pensacola Children's Hospital Surgical Wing, Natalie Lockwood speaking. What can I help you with today?"

"Yes, hi…can you please connect me to Dr. Robbins?" I remembered her last name about a split second ago, just before it came out of my mouth. I just kept seeing flashes of her name embroidered on her white lab coat and it finally came to me. "Tell her it'll only be one moment and it's urgent, please." I can tell that asking to speak to the head of pediatric surgery isn't an easy request to grant. The woman doesn't say anything else to me before she clicks me over. More elevator music starts playing. I don't know what exactly I'm going to say to Arizona, but I think it's going to be somewhere along the lines of "please don't fire Alex". I can't believe I'm getting ready to beg for his job.

"This is Dr. Robbins speaking." She answers the phone with the lightest, happiest voice I've ever heard in my life. I can tell that she's smiling even though I can't see her. I can just hear the smile in her voice, if that makes any sense at all.

"Hi Arizona, it's Jo…you met me a few days ago. I'm Alex's girlfriend?" I feel like the biggest idiot right now but Alex HAS to keep his job. I just want to make sure she knows that he's not just ditching work for no reason. I don't know if he's called her to say that he won't be in for a few days but I seriously doubt it so I just want to cover all bases. I think I'm overstepping major boundaries here but I swear I'm only doing all of this to protect him.

"Oh my goodness, yes." She sighs into the phone like she's relieved, which just further confirms my suspicion that Alex hasn't called her at all to let her know that he won't be coming to work. "I haven't heard from Alex in a while, which isn't like him…and he was supposed to be here for the last two days and he didn't show. Is everything alright with him? I've been covering for him with the chief for the last two days but I don't know if I still can. He won't answer his phone. He was supposed to be here at 3:00 today, what the heck is up?"

"I know, I haven't heard from him lately either…I was kind of hoping that maybe you have." Tears sting the corners of my eyes but I blink them back. "But as far as I know, he's alright. Something happened on Monday that really affected him and he's been going through a very hard personal thing. I'm sorry that he hasn't called, but he hasn't really been seeing people lately. He'll be alright though…I just wanted to call and make sure you knew about all of this. I didn't want you to think that he's been ditching work. He's just been going through a really hard time."

"Oh my gosh, is he alright? What's going on, Jo?"

"…I can't say. It's not my place. I just want you to know that he's alright. Nobody died or anything of that nature and he should be back to normal…soon, maybe. But it's not my place to say exactly what it is." I can't bring myself to tell her exactly what it is. It's not my business really and I can already feel it in my soul that Alex isn't going to be so pleasant if and when he decides to start talking to me again. He's already going to be distraught and I don't want to give him any more reason to be pissed at me. I already feel like I'm overstepping so many different boundaries here…I'm just going to leave one line uncrossed. "Can you just give him a few weeks off? It's going to take him a while to get through this. Please Arizona…I'm asking you this personally. Can you please just make sure he keeps his job?"

"Of course. No matter what it is, he'll always have a job here with me." She agrees promptly, as if she doesn't even have to give it a second thought. "When you get in touch with him…please make sure he calls me. Alright?"

"I will." I agree.

"I have to go now…thanks for calling me and letting me know."

"No problem." I mumble and take the phone away from my ear just as she hangs it up. I thought that maybe calling his job and letting them know that he won't be at work for a while would make me feel at least a little bit better but it doesn't. I feel like the biggest piece of shit on the planet for running my mouth. I know that I did it just to ensure that he gets to keep his job but I still feel guilty. I just wish he'd talk to me. I sigh and get up off the swing. I stick my phone in my back pocket, pick up my car keys and start walking down the front steps. I just want to go home.

I unlock my car door and walk around to the driver's seat. But just as I'm about to climb in the car, I hear what sounds like someone clearing their throat, which makes me turn around. Our one neighbor is out walking her dog. I give her a fake smile and wave at her. She looks at me like I'm a leech and stops walking. "Any luck getting him to come out today?" She asks. I'm not surprised that her nosy ass noticed that I've been going over Alex's house every day. She's so nosy, she notices everything. I just shake my head and glance down at her dog. "Heard anything from him?" I shake my head again. "It'd probably benefit him if you just gave up." Her voice is hostile all of a sudden, like she's trying to tell me off. I stop looking at her dog, look up at her and wrinkle my eyebrows. "If he has any chance of getting his baby girl back, I think it'd be best if you went away and stayed away." My eyebrows wrinkle even harder as a mere reaction. I feel like she's about to offend me. "I saw how them people came in and took that little girl away. I'm guessing that has something to do with you." I open my mouth but she won't even let me speak. "I'm sure you're a very nice girl but you're not a person that should be around such young children. Everything was fine until he brought you into her life. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that you're the problem. How is he ever going to get her back if he has a felon for a girlfriend?" I close my mouth. "The law doesn't miss anything when it comes to the wellbeing of children...all I had to do was search your name on the internet and things came up. You think for one second people don't know that you've got charges on you from up in Massachusetts? You should stay away…for his sake and especially for his little girl's sake. If he has any hope of getting her back, you need to stay away…"

"…You have no idea what you're talking about. You should really try getting to know a person before you judge and speak upon things you have NO idea about. You don't know what you're talking about and I have NOTHING to do with the fact that Lyla's no longer with him. If you kept your nose on your face instead of in other peoples' business, maybe you'd actually know what you're talking about. You know nothing. NOTHING." I have half a mind to bawl my fists up and punch this woman in her face for even suggesting that I could possibly be the reason that Lyla got taken away. I should punch her in the mouth for thinking that she knows me. She doesn't know shit about me. How dare she…she knows nothing. "And I'm not a felon. I'm nowhere close to that. You should learn your facts." I open up my car, get in the driver's seat and slam the door. Screw that woman. She knows nothing. She has no idea what she's talking about. I'm not a felon. I have a DUI on my record and a case of reckless endangerment, that's all. I have nothing else other than those two things. And Lyla loves me. I didn't cause any of this…did I?

Is that why Alex has been ignoring me? Because he knows that if the detectives google my name, all the newspaper clippings and newscasts from back in Chamberlain will pop up? Could that be detrimental towards Alex getting Lyla back if he's dating a woman that's been in trouble with the law? …No. That can't be right. If that's the case then why is he ignoring everyone? He's ignoring his job too. If it was me, he would only be ignoring me. Right? What if that is the reason though?

Maybe it is better if I just stay away from Alex. I don't want to hurt his chances of getting Lyla back. Maybe I should stay away. I was just trying to help. I was only trying to help him. I'm so worried about him. I've just been getting his mail, trying to get him to speak to me…I only want to help. I don't want to hurt anything. I should just…I should stay away. If Alex doesn't want me around, I have to respect that. I really hope there's no truth to what she just said to me. I just don't know what the hell I should do. I know one thing though…

I can't stop caring about whether or not Alex is okay.

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 **THIS IS OPTIONAL. IT IS NOT ESSENTIAL TO THE STORY THAT YOU READ THIS. YOU CAN SKIP OVER THIS IF YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE READING IT.**

 **A/N:** Okay so clearly I have a few things to clear up. First of all, I never claimed for anything I wrote last chapter to be 100% true. If I wrote everything to be 100% true, there would be so many boring parts of this story because the whole process that CPS takes to evacuate children from homes is lengthy and it's very tedious. Yes, I realize that I've bent some of the rules but this is FANFICTION. Things are not 100% accurate and I acknowledge that. Sorry if I've gotten some of the process wrong, as well. I grew up with a very good mother (my father died when I was three) and my mother raised me very well. I've never had to deal with CPS so I don't know exactly how everything works; I only know what I do research on. With that being said, I would never write something like this blindly or with ignorance on the subject. I spent a total of three hours researching the subject and reading as much as I possibly could in order to get this as accurate as possible and yeah, it's still not 100% right and I apologize for that. With all of that being said, there are a few things that I know are accurate. THose things are:

1\. CPS does not give you a warning as to when they are going to show up. They show up as a surprise and once allegations have been made, they reserve the right to question you and the child.

2\. It does not matter if the person that makes the accusations is mentally unstable because that person is NOT required to report that they are mentally unstable. The only way Helen being bipolar will make a difference is if Alex were to tell his lawyer that his mother is bipolar and then they can use that against her. As of right now, CPS doesn't know that Helen is bipolar because she was not required to tell them. Alex can and will make sure his lawyer uses it against her and that's when it'll come out.

3\. CPS can and will remove a child from a home if they have reason to believe that the child is in danger. The fact that Helen took pictures and documented the abuse is reason enough. In other words, Alex's explanation as to how she got the bruises and marks is not enough because ANYONE can make up a lie, get it? They have to investigate further because as of right now, Helen's pictures prove that Lyla's been abused and Alex's explanation (though it's the truth) does not prove that he didn't do it. It's just a statement. If Helen hadn't taken pictures, then it would be a he said/she said kind of thing and they wouldn't have grounds to remove the child from the home (At least that's how it works in the state of Florida, I checked) if there are no visual signs of abuse, neglect or endangerment.

4\. CPS will put a younger child into foster care if they are too young to go to a group home (there is an exception to this but I can't tell you what it is because it would spoil chapter 49 if i told you).

Like I said, the exact process might've been a little inaccurate but I needed a way to create drama in a somewhat believable and interesting way and I promise that the legal aspects are as accurate as possible. I'm not like some authors that might just write things without researching first. I would never write something so ignorantly, I swear. And I didn't mean to come across as ignorant on the subject.

& To the guest from Austria: I know that you were only being inquisitive because you're unsure about how things work in this country, there's no need to apologize & You can state your opinions as freely as everyone else. Sorry if anything that was said hurt your feelings or struck a nerve.

 **Thank you to everyone that understands that I might not get everything 100% right. It really means a lot to have your support. I hope you guys enjoy the story from here on out.**


	48. Without You

**A/N:** I did technically update twice in one day, so make sure you guys check out chapter 47 before you read this chapter. Just in case you guys missed the double update.

As per request, this chapter is a little bit different. You'll see how soon enough. Sorry if you don't like the different part. It's a one-time thing...unless you guys like it then I could try and do it more often.

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I close my eyes and put my head down to the water can hit the back of my neck. I turned the nozzle all the way on hot and only added a tad bit of cold to it. It's burning my skin just a little but there's still a part of me that's dissatisfied with it. There's still a part of me that needs it to be hot enough to really burn me—hot enough to leave marks and welts—hot enough to make me want to remember that I'm actually in the shower. I look down at the water below and scrunch my toes up, staring at how the blue nail polish on my toenails is chipping. The suds are rolling off my body, collecting on the floor below me and eventually making their way down the drain. Wouldn't it be something if problems worked that way? Wouldn't it be so much easier if you could just get in the shower, lather yourself up with soap and water and watch all your problems and cares in the world wash away down the drain? I wish life was one big shower. That's probably the most awkward metaphor I've ever come up with, but it makes sense if you think about it. Let the water wash away my issues, my sanity and just leave me here for a while. That way, I can try to make sense of my life. Sighing, I pick my hands up and turn them so that my palms are facing the ceiling. I look at my fingertips and once I see that they're wrinkly and pruny from me being in here so long, I decide that it's time for me to get out. I tilt my head backwards so the water can get one last dig at my hair and turn around so that I'm facing the spray.

I don't know what makes this time so much different than the other two times but it is. It's very different for some reason. Usually after I come back from desperately begging Alex to let me in his house, I'm able to shake it off. I'm able to come home, cook myself something for dinner, eat, take a shower, watch something on TV for a little while and go to bed. It's never really a big deal because I just know that I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning and do the same thing all over again. But this time, I just can't stop thinking about it. I can't stop thinking about the fact that he won't answer me, the fact that he won't talk to me. I did my usual routine after I came into my house. I put two french bread pizzas in the oven for dinner and I watched TV until they finished. I ate dinner in front of my TV and I watched The People's Court while I ate. I washed my dishes, I cleaned up my kitchen. I locked up my house for the night. I came in here and took a shower and here I am, still not able to get over it. He's been on my mind so heavy lately and it's not usually like this. I'm usually able to shake this but today, I can't. I seriously just can't. I can't stop thinking about all the thing that could be wrong with him.

I lean forward and turn off the shower. I really think he's dead. I know that makes me kind of morbid, but I swear to god I think he's dead. I know Jimmy said that he's not. Jimmy said that he's not dead. Jimmy said that he's alright. But why should I trust him? Why should I trust him when he says that Alex is okay if he hasn't heard from him since Monday either? There's been no sign of life at Alex's house in three whole days and I'm going crazy just thinking about that fact. I mean, even if he just wanted to be left alone, there would be some indication that he's alive, wouldn't there be? His mailbox would've been emptied, his blinds would've been open, his door would've looked disturbed…there would've been SOMETHING to show me that he's alive. Why should I trust Jimmy when he says that Alex is okay if his own son can't even trust him? I said I was going to give it until Monday but I don't think I can. I really don't think I can wait until Monday. This is already eating me alive and I can only imagine how I'd feel if it turns out that he is dead in there and I waited a week to call the authorities. I can't wait until Monday. It has to be tomorrow. It has to be tomorrow….

I pull back my shower curtain and grab my towel off the rack next to my sink. I wrap it around my body and stuff my feet into my house slippers. I drag my feet over to my cabinet and grab another towel to wrap around my dripping wet hair. I drape the towel over my head and sit down on the edge of my bathtub. What if he really is dead? What if I call the cops tomorrow so they can break down the door and they find him in there dead? What am I going to do if he's dead? My jaw starts trembling so fast that it won't stop even if I bite down on my lip. Seriously, what if he's dead? What am I gonna do then? I rest my elbows on my knees and hold my head in the palms of both my hands. He can't be dead. He really can't be. He can't do that to me. If he's dead, I'll never get over it. I don't know if I can take that. I was just barely hanging on after Mark's death and if Alex dies on me too…I can't handle that. I already know that I can't. I don't consider myself a weak person but I already know that I'm not strong enough to handle that. He gave me a reason to live, a reason to carry on…if he's dead too, then what? What do I do then? Do I pick up and move to another state? I can't handle it. I can't…I really need him to be okay. If he's still grieving, that's fine…I just really need him to be okay. But what if he's dead? That'll break me. Literally, rip me apart and make me two separate halves of the same person. It'll pick me up and snap me in two, like a toothpick. He really can't be dead. They have to go in there and find him alive because if he's dead I won't be okay and if he's dead I don't have anything left he's the only thing I have to live for he's the only one… I can't breathe.

I take my hands away from my face and clamp them over my heart, trying to get myself to breathe again. I think I'm having a panic attack and that coupled with the fact that I can't stop sobbing is making it extremely hard to breathe. The last time I felt like this was when I was hanging upside down inside the car, trying to get Mark to say something after his head slumped to the side. I couldn't breathe then either. I can't even see straight right now because tears are clouding my vision, trickling down my cheeks and splashing on my towel. I can't stop crying though. Seriously, what if Alex is dead? What am I going to do if he's dead? I'll lose my damn mind. I'm so serious. I really think they're going to have to lock me up somewhere…or I'm going to have to go back to New Jersey to live with my mom. I can't live on my own if Alex's is dead. I think I'll go crazy. I remember how out of my mind I was when Mark died. Losing Alex would be like a double whammy. I can't lose him. Maybe I'm being selfish but I swear to god, I'll kick his ass if he killed himself. He could be in the casket and I'd hop in there with him to kick his ass. He can't just leave me like this. Maybe I'm being a selfish bitch but how selfish is he if he kills himself? He can't just leave me after he did all of this. He made me let him in. He made me fall in love with him and he made me fall crazy too. It's his fault. I'll never fucking forgive him for doing this to me if he's dead.

I give up on even trying to catch my breath and put my hands back over my face again. My stomach muscles contract and my shoulders hunch up and down as the sobs rock my body when they come out. I'm so glad that nobody's here to witness this because I'm having the worst breakdown I've had since the death of my child. I'm not even trying to hide it either. I'm crying hard, loud and there's nothing that anybody (except Alex) would be able to do to calm me down. My head is already starting to hurt from crying so hard. My headache is throbbing, pulsating back behind my eyeballs. My eyes are tired, heavy and puffy from crying but I just can't stop. I can't stop crying. I want him to talk to me. I want to know that he's alright. It's been four days since I've seen him. Where's Alex? I take my hands away from my face again and sniff. My jaw is still uncontrollably shaking and I feel another round of tears about to spill over so I replace my hands over my eyes again and let out a moan. I can't believe I'm sitting here crying like this. I can't believe this man has got his hooks in me this deep. I've only ever cried over one man before him and that was my husband. I don't shed tears over men. Men come and go. But Alex…he's not just a man. It's killing me that he won't talk to me. It's killing me. It's tearing me apart. I just want to hear his voice.

I sniff again, bite down hard on my lip and pick myself up off the bathtub ledge. I'm not done crying. I can feel it. I can feel that more tears are still in my eyes and more sobs are in my body. I'm nowhere near done crying. But I'm uncomfortable and I don't want to keep crying sitting here in my bathroom. I want to lie down in the comfort of my own bed, put my head on my pillow, turn out all the lights and cry until I'm so tired that I have nothing left to do but fall asleep. In order for me to be able to do that, I have to finish up in here. I close my eyes hard and swallow a lump in the back of my throat. It feels like I just dry-swallowed a pill and it got stuck. When I open my eyes, I come face-to-face with myself in my bathroom mirror. My eyes are red-rimmed and so puffy that it's a wonder I can even see of out of them. My nose is red, my cheeks are flushed and my lips are discolored from me biting them. I look like I had some sort of allergy attack. I have to purse my lips together to prevent another onslaught of tears. Instead of crying again, I grab my toothbrush and put a dab of toothpaste on it. I don't even bother wetting it. I just shove it my mouth and start viciously dragging it across my teeth.

I slap at the faucet, turn it on to rinse out my mouth, rinse off my toothbrush, put it back and turn the water back off. That was the shittiest teeth-brushing job I've ever done in my life but I don't care right now. All I'm interested in doing is making my way to my bed so I can cry. I turn off the lights in my bathroom and drag my feet to my bedroom. I sit down on my bed and stare at a crack in my wall. What if Monday was the last time I'll ever talk to him again? What if he's dead and Monday was the last time I'd ever get to see him alive? I'm not satisfied with the last conversation we had. The last conversation we had involved him throwing me out of his house. The last thing I heard him say to me was "GO!" and the last thing I said to him was "Alex." I didn't even get a chance to tell him that I love him. I really didn't think that I do. I thought I was just falling in love with the idea of being in love again. I thought that I just had love FOR him instead of being in love WITH him and for that reason, I was hesitant to tell him that I loved him. Because I'm not the kind of girl that says something like that without meaning it. Come to think of it, I'm not the kind of girl that says "I love you" at all. I'd rather just show you with my actions that I love you and I feel like actions should just prove to you how I feel about you. I don't say that lightly.

But I do. I love Alex. What else could this be? I've seriously considered selling my body to ensure that he doesn't lose his child. I wouldn't mind going to jail for him. He's been ignoring me, yet I still go over his house to get his mail. I called his job today to make sure that he doesn't lose it. I'm going crazy wracking my brain, trying to figure out how I can find out where his kid is so I can get her back for him. I'm still thinking about who I could pay off or sleep with to make sure that nothing like this ever happens to him again. I would do anything in this world to make sure he never has to feel this kind of pain again. I'm going crazy thinking about him. I wasted a whole pizza and a half for dinner today because I can't eat. I'm sitting here in my towel crying over him. If this isn't love then I don't know what it is. I love him. And I never even got the chance to tell him that I do.

Ever since Monday, I've been lonely and I just…I feel so cold and dead. My life just hasn't been the same. I feel so weak without him kissing me, touching me, holding me. I never thought that I could love a man this much again but here I am. I think he's the one for me. I'm even willing to go out on a limb and say that Mark wasn't my soulmate. I think it's always been Alex. You know how there are some people in this world that are just made for each other? I think Alex is my other half; my destiny. From the moment that I met him, I felt something. I wasn't always sure what that something was but it was something. It wasn't always romantic attraction but it was attraction. Just the feeling that I wanted to be near him. It wasn't stalkerish or creepy like the girls that told me about him. I always saw him as more than just a piece of eye candy. Honestly, I wasn't even sexually attracted to him up until Disney. What attracted me to Alex was his personality, not his physical traits. From the moment that I met him, it's been so damn real. This probably sounds pathetic but I can no longer go on without him…I'll just break down. I'm finally able to sit down, get in touch with my feelings and admit all of this to myself…and I can't even admit it to him.

Even if Alex is still alive, it's pretty clear that I've lost him. If he's still alive, he's going to thrust himself into trying to get Lyla back and he's not going to have time for a girlfriend. I won't be mad about that. I'll respect that. But there's no telling how long it's going to take me to get over him. It took me this long to get over Mark…I imagine getting over Alex is going to be at least triple the amount of time. I think I'm going to give up on love after this one. I sniff again and stand up off my bed. I rub myself dry with my towel and toss it over on the chair in the corner of my room. I pick up the pair of underwear I laid out and put them on. I pop my t-shirt over my head too and pull the blankets on my bed back. I grab my phone off my bed and walk it over to my dresser so I can put it on the charger for the night. I shove my charger cord into the slot and when my phone lights up, the screen says that I have a missed call. Sighing, I slide my thumb across the screen. I go to my call log and check the number. It says "unknown." I wouldn't have answered it anyway. I don't answer unknown numbers.

I click out of my call log and check the red balloon next to my messages icon. I tap on my messages and it says that I have a missed text message from…from ALEX?! I tap on it as fast as I can and when it pops up, all it says is "why didn't you answer ur phone?" Was HE calling me restricted? Oh my god! Alex! I yank the charger out of my phone and tap on his name. My heart is beating so fast. I stick the phone to my ear and my legs start shaking. Pick up pick up pick up pick up pick up pick up. The ringing stops on the fifth ring. "…" I can hear rustling in the background but no voice. …What if someone else has his phone. What if they're calling me to tell me that they found him dead? I'm too scared to say anything into the phone so I just remain silent. My legs….My legs are shaking. I can't move them though. They're shaking but that's all their doing. Oh please don't be someone telling me that he's dead. Please…please. I'm too scared to say anything…I'm too scared. "…You there?" A very raspy, scratchy voice says into the receiver. It doesn't sound like him at all. I feel my face fall. It's not him. "…Jo?" The person coughs into the phone. "You there?"

"…Alex?" I ask. At best, it'll be him after all and he'll answer me. At worst, the person at the other end will tell me who it is. I'm not ready to hear that he's dead….I'm not ready to hear this. "Alex, is that you?"

"…Yeah." He coughs again and this time, it does sound like him. His voice is scratchy and he sounds like he's crying so his voice is a bit high-pitched but it's him. It's him. HE CALLED ME. HE'S OKAY. OH GOD, HE'S OKAY. My legs finally stop shaking but instead of becoming firm, my knees go weak and I have to hold onto my dresser to keep myself from falling down on the floor. I clutch my hand over my chest again and start bawling all over again, this time tears of joy. Oh god, he's okay. He's okay. Dear god, he's alright. He's alive. "Come over…" He mumbles. "Please come over." I can't even say anything because I'm crying so hard. It's one of those silent cries. Silent but very, very hard. "Please come over, Jo…I need you…" He sounds like he's crying himself.

And with that, he hangs up the phone.

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 **A/N:** This is a one-time thing, so don't expect this to happen a lot. Hope this clears up some questions and gives you guys better insight and hope you guys don't mind this.

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 **X X X**

I look down at the pink plate on the table in front of my chair. I don't know what this is. It looks like pasketti but it don't look like normal pasketti. This pasketti has brown noodles and no meat in the sauce. It looks nasty. I push the plate away from me like I been doing for a lot of days now and look down at the floor. The floor is not like the floor at home. The floor at home in the kitchen doesn't have soft stuff on it. The floor at home in the kitchen is brown and it's hard and sometimes it's cold if I walk on it with no socks on. The kitchen here isn't like the kitchen at home either. The kitchen at home has a oven and a 'frigerator and a dish washer. This kitchen don't have none of that. This kitchen has a table, chairs and a closet with plates in it. I put my hand on the pink plate and push it away some more. Not even the pasketti looks good here. Last dinner time the girl here maked some hangibbers and brown stuff and corn on the cob. That wasn't even looking good. The hangibber was still pink in the middle and there was yellow stuff on it. The corn on the cob had green stuff still on the bottom and the brown stuff was nasty looking too. It looked like pork and beans but not like daddy's pork and beans. And the dinner time before that, the ticken wasn't brown. It was white and it have gravy on it. And the mash tatoes had green stuff in it. This food is ewwy here.

"What's the matter sweetie? You don't like spaghetti?" The girl stand by my chair and her touch my head. Her been touching my head a lot. Her touch my head and rub my hair and I don't like it only except when daddy or JoeDoe does it. The girl nice but I don't like her. Her has yellow hair with curly q's in it and her a little bit fat. The boy is nice too but I still don't like him either. Him is tall like daddy but him not fat at all. Him like a stick. Him has glasses and a bald head. "I have macaroni and cheese in the fridge…will you eat that?" I shake my head no. I don't really want any food. My tummy isn't noisy and I don't want to eat eat. "Would you like some juice?" I shake my head yes. "I'll get you some juice, sweetheart." The girl stops touching my head and goes away to the other kitchen; the kitchen with a oven and a 'frigerator.

I turn around and look to make sure her gives me juice that I like. I can't see to the other kitchen but I can hear. "We can't keep giving her Pedialyte, Sam…she has to eat some real food. She hasn't eaten a lick of food since she got here." The boy gives the girl a hug. "Maybe we should order out tomorrow. She might eat a slice of pizza or something like that. She just needs some real food in her system."

"But I don't want to give her fast food, Roger. She probably had enough of that for one lifetime. I want to feed her healthy. Why do you think I baked the chicken? Why do you think I put her burger on a wheat bun? Why do you think I made multigrain pasta? I need her to eat something nutritious for once."

"I understand that, but wouldn't you rather her eat a taste of real food instead of just giving her this juice all the time? She can't keep drinking gallons of this stuff a day. We gotta get her to eat _something_ , honey. You remember how Jacob was when he first came to stay with us…"

"I just feel bad if I feed her a slice of pizza when I know that she needs to eat healthier. They brought her to us because she was being mistreated in the first place. What good are we if we just do the same things that they took her away from?" I turn back around and look at the other boy. Him is eating his pasketti like it tastes good. Him has brown, pointy hair, glasses and a space between his teeth. Him is nice too but him likes to watch stupid stuff on TV and I have to watch stupid stuff too. The girl comes back into the kitchen with us and gimme a pink cuppy. "Is your head hurting you at all, sweetheart?" I shake my head no and take a drink of the juice. My head only hurts if I lay down on it. I have a black capitiller on my head and sometimes it hurts if I forget it's there and touch it but only then.

I look under the table and put my thumb on the glass part of the watch that daddy gimme. I miss daddy a bunch. I miss when him waked me up in the morning and feed me woofles. I miss him so much. I wonder if him members me. I wonder if him forgetted about me yet. I wonder if I ever gonna get to see him ever again. I don't know why him don't want me no more but I hope him want me again someday and I get to go back home with him and my pet fishy. I miss JoeDoe too. I miss how JoeDoe tuck me in bed and gimme kisses on my head and I miss how JoeDoe smells. Her always smells so good and I miss her. I hope JoeDoe and daddy miss me too. I thought I was gonna go to pweschool and stuff with daddy. I didn't think him not want me no more. I thought that you get the same daddy for forever. But this girl and this boy are my new mommy and my new daddy they said and I didn't know that could happen. I didn't know you could go away if your other daddy don't want you no more. Maybe daddy make me go away because him was gonna die like mommy did. Maybe daddy in heabben already. Well if him in heabben he can be with mommy. But what about JoeDoe? If daddy didn't want me, why didn't JoeDoe? And I miss pappy too. I wanna go back home.

Why do mean people do stuff? A mean girl comed in the room with me while I was eating pizza and watching a moobie and her asked me lots of stuff. Her ask me if daddy ever maked me feel bad during baths and I telled her no. Her ask me if daddy ever touch me bad on my no-no spots and I telled her no. Her ask me if daddy ever give me hitting with a belt or his hand and I telled her no. Her ask me what daddy do when him get mad at me and I telled her that him makes me go to timeout. Her ask me what I eat for bweakfast and stuff and her ask me if I like it at my home and I telled her yes. I thought her was just gonna leave me alone but no. Daddy maked me go upstairs and put clothes in a bag and some toys and the people taked me. Them put me in a car and drived a long time and them bring me here. That was a long time ago though. And then them taked me to a place. A place where I had to tell a girl that daddy doesn't touch my no-no spots again. I don't know why them keep asking me that. If I say daddy don't touch my no-no spots except for the bath them should believe me. Maybe they didn't believe me though. Acause them taked me to a doctor too. I had to be nakey in the doctor room and the girl doctor looked at my no-no spots too…maybe they just wanted to see that I wasn't fibbing. Maybe daddy's mad cause he think I telled them yes. But I didn't. I just don't know what I did for daddy not to want me. Daddy say I didn't do nothing but if I didn't do nothing then why doesn't he want me to be home? I think him mad at me for coloring on the wall upstairs but I just say sorry and I won't do it again. If him let me come home, I be so good. I just want to go home. I want my daddy.

"Lyla." The girl call me so I hurry up and put daddy's watch back in my pocket so her not take it from me. If her take daddy's watch, I no member him at all. Daddy lemme keep his watch and I let him keep Lionel. I put Lionel underneath hims pillow. I wonder if him finded Lionel yet. I wanted daddy to have it so him not forget all about me if him ever gets a new LyLy. I look at the girl while her standing next to me. "Why don't we go change you into pajamas and get you your medicine?" I just look at her. I don't want jammies. This shirt smell like daddy. I wanna leave it on. No jammies. Her grab me under my arms and pick me up. I lean away from her. I don't know why her always wants to pick me up. Her won't let me walk by myself but I can. I'm a big girl. JoDoe teached me how to walk by myself.

The girl take me upstairs to the room with the purple bed and pink walls. Her open up my bag that daddy put my clothes in and gets jammies. The boy comes in the room too and him is carrying my cuppy. Them do this every night. Them put me in jammies and gimme medicine and put me in the big bed after I don't eat the yucky stuff they gimme. Sometimes they gimme baths but I don't need a bath tonight so them not gimme one. "She's running low on training pants. I'll run to the store tomorrow to get her some." The boy put his hand on the girl's back. "…Don't be upset, Samantha. She'll warm up to us."

"When, Roger? It didn't even take Jake this long to warm up to us. Jake was talking and eating within his second day of being here…and Jake came to us when he was four too. She's been here since Monday and still nothing. She hasn't spoken, hasn't eaten…I don't even know if the child can speak. All she's been doing is crying. And she doesn't cry in front of us either. You hear her crying after we tuck her in bed, don't you? She doesn't say a word…ever. And it's breaking my heart because I'm falling in love with her but I don't think she'll ever be comfortable here. I just want to give her a good home. Look at her…she's so cute."

"Kids are different, Sam. Not all of them adjust the same way. Even if she was mistreated, she was still just ripped out of the only home she ever knew. She was taken away from the only person she ever knew. This is all still so new for her. We're strange people, this is a strange house…and she's only four. You heard what the caseworker said when they dropped her off. They told you from the start that she's timid, shy and very quiet. Just take comfort in knowing that she's safe with us, no matter if she's crying and not eating." The boy wipes the girls eyes cause her was crying. "And what did I tell you when we first heard that they were bringing us a four year old little girl? Didn't I tell you not to get attached until you know if they're going to terminate her parents' rights?"

"I wasn't attached." The girl takes one of my diapers out of my bag. I sit down on the floor. I don't want jammies tonight. "…At least I didn't think I was going to get attached. But when they took her out of that car and I laid eyes on her…" Her looks at me but I don't look at her. I look at the floor. "For years, we prayed Roger…we prayed for years that they'd bring us a little girl that we could potentially adopt. Our prayers have been answered with a beautiful, beautiful little girl and she doesn't even like us…" I think her is crying again. "Look in her eyes. You can't tell me that you didn't fall in love with that little face."

"I'm not getting attached, Sam. Anything could happen and there's already someone trying to get custody of her. This is temporary, Sam. We're not going to get to adopt her. She's not even up for adoption." What's doption? Doption sounds scary. I don't think they like me a lot because I don't say nothing around them and I won't eat the yucky stuff. People I don't know scare me. There was a lot of people I don't know in the house when mommy got burned and made into dust. Them people bringed cake and cookies and tuna noodle castle but them were scary because them maked daddy cry and stuff. Ever since then, people I don't know scare me. The boy comes over to where I'm sitting on the floor and picks me up. Him makes me stand on my feet so I do. Him grab my shirt. But I don't want jammies tonight! This shirt smells like daddy! No jammies! Him takes the shirt off me.

"NO!" I push his hands away and move to the door but the door is closed and I can't reach the knob. "NO JAMMY! NO!"

"See Sam, I told you she could talk." The boy picks me up now but I kick my feet so him will put me down. "Lyla, we're just going to put on your pajamas. You have to have pajamas on so you can get in bed, okay? We're not going to hurt you."

"PUH ME DOWN! DOWN! GO WAY! I WANT MY DADDY!" I kick my legs but him doesn't put me down. Why can't they just lemme go back to my daddy? "I WANT MY DADDY!"

"Figures, the first time we hear her voice, she'd be screaming." The girl picks me up off the boy next but I still kick. Just put me down. I don't want to be holded! "Lyla, calm down sweetie…calm down." Her tries to make me lay on her shoulder but I don't want to.

"I WANNA GO HOME!" I put my hands on the girl's face and push her away. "STOPPIT! PUH ME DOWN!"

"Lyla, calm down! We're not going to hurt you…this is your home now." The girl rubs my back. "It's okay, you're safe here…you're safe. This is your home now." This is my home? I don't want this to be home! I wanna go to daddy! I want daddy. The girl squeezes her arms around my body and I don't think her is gonna put me down. So I stop kicking and put my head on her shoulder. I put my finger in my mouth and since they won't gimme back to my daddy, I'm just gonna cry. I wanna go home. This isn't home. This isn't home… daddy is home. Daddy and JoeDoe. I want them. "Shh…Shhh…" Her kiss me on the cheek and I don't like that. "Shhh, sweet angel…shhh."

"She's not going to stop screaming, is she?" The boy touches my hair and rubs it. "Poor little thing."

"She can scream for as long as she needs to."

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I feel my way through the darkness as I shut the door behind myself. It's not like I don't know Alex's house well enough to know where the light switches are when it's dark, I just don't want to turn a light on. Turning a light on seems…disrespectful in some way, if that makes sense. It's dark in here and I'm assuming that it's been dark for a very long time so turning on a light is kind of like eating the forbidden fruit. My eyes adjust quickly to the darkness and I can see that things have been undisturbed since Monday. I bend down and pick up all the mail that I've been slipping through the crack. I put the mail on the kitchen table and notice that there's a sink full of dishes in dirty dishwater. I make a mental note to clean that up. Looking around, I slowly walk through the living room, careful not to step on anything. There's a pizza box still on his coffee table, a bottle of Sprite on the floor and blankets still piled on the couch. I'm guessing he hasn't done much of anything since Monday. The living room smells so bad with the spoiled pizza on the coffee table. I make a mental note to clean that up too. I wrap my hand around the railing and start climbing the steps. "….Alex? It's me." Talking seems forbidden too, but I don't want to scare him by not announcing my presence. I swear that's the last thing I'll say.

I make it to the top of the steps and look around as my eyes adjust to this totally new form of darkness. All the doors upstairs are closed, except for the lone pink door that still stands out even in darkness. Again, he must not have done anything since Monday. I distinctly remember shutting his door after I came out of his bedroom on Monday. And I shut his bathroom door too…on Monday. I have half a mind to look in his bedroom first, but there's another half of me that knows where he is. I push open the pink door just a little bit more and sure enough, he's right in here. He's laying in her tiny little princess bed with his face buried in her pillows and he has her stuffed lion cradled underneath his arm; like it's the most precious thing ever. I'm still just so incredibly glad that he's okay. "…Alex?" I whisper his name. I tiptoe over to the bed and hover over him. "Alex…" I put my hand on his back. I know he's awake and alive because he was just downstairs unlocking the door for me. I don't know when he unlocked the door though. He could've unlocked it hours ago before he even called me.

I sit down in the small space left unoccupied by his body on the bed and keep my hand on his back. His hair is very messed up and unruly, spinning off in a million different directions. Through the darkness, I can make out that he's wearing the same thing he was wearing on Monday. I lean down and press my lips to the side of his head. He smells really bad. He smells like body odor but I guess that's to be expected when he clearly hasn't showered since Monday either. I can see his eyelashes fluttering every time he blinks, which lets me know that he's awake. "…Come on." I whisper to him. I stand up from the bed and put my hands around his shoulders. I start pulling him and for a moment, he doesn't let me pick him up. After he resists me for a second, he gradually helps me. It's as if he's been wanting to peel his body off this bed for days now but he didn't have the strength to do it until I came to help him. He stands up, lifelessly. He seems so hollow…like all I'm doing is helping his carcass. It's like there's no soul in him. Like everything that makes him so perfectly Alex is gone. I wrap my arm around his waist and help him out of Lyla's bedroom. He's stiff as a board. "Bathroom." I mumble. He stalks to the bathroom with my help.

I flip on the light in the bathroom and help him inside. Now that we're in some light, I've got a good view of him and I can see that he looks BAD. His eyes are red rimmed and bloodshot. He has worry lines in his forehead, his beard is growing in pretty thick, his hair hasn't been properly combed and he looks like he hasn't slept in a while. His eyes are glossed over, sorrow filled. His mouth is in a permanent grimace and he looks blank. Like he's looking straight through everything. I let his waist go and start his shower water. I make sure it's hot but not too hot. I turn the shower on and go back over to where he's standing. He still looks blank…like he's not even functioning. I think he's lost some weight. He's usually bulky and muscular but he looks weak and thinner, flushed even. I start by taking off his shirt. He lifts his arms up to help me. I untie the drawstrings on his sweatpants and pull them down too. He smells so bad. I take off his boxers too and gather up all his dirty clothes. I shove everything into the hamper next to the sink and help him into the tub. "…You need me to stay here?" He shakes his head. "Alright. Holler if you need anything." I kiss his bicep and leave him alone to bathe.

I leave out of the bathroom and go straight into his bedroom. I turn the light on in here too and look around. It's just the way we left it on Monday. I sweep all the crumbs out of the bed to clean out the sheets and start pulling the blankets back. There's no sense in fully making the bed if all we're about to do is get back in it. I fluff up the pillows and go over to his dresser. I pick out a pair of boxers for him and a t-shirt. I lay his clothes on the bed and open the vents to let some fresh air from the air conditioning system in the room. After I'm done in his bedroom, I head downstairs. I must say, I didn't think that I would be coming over here to take care of him. I imagined that he would still be in a grieving state, but I didn't think that I would have to help him undress and take a shower. I was expecting to come over here, kiss him, tell him I'm here for him and then give him a piece of my damn mind for scaring the shit out of me the way he did. But with the current mental state he's in right now, I don't think he's in any position to hear the third degree from me about anything. I kind of sense that he's sorry for the way he's been towards me lately. And I understand that he's grieving. I don't need an apology. Seeing him as bad off as he is…that's enough of an apology for me.

I start off the living room by cleaning the pizza box and the soda bottle. I hold my breath because the pizza smells god awful. I break the box down and stick it in the trash, along with the bottle. After I got the stuff in the trashcan, I take the bag out and head outside with it so I can stick it in the outside garbage can. I wonder if he has anything to eat in his fridge. Not for me, but for him. I'm sure he hasn't eaten anything since Monday and that's not how he needs to be taking care of himself. He's going to get Lyla back eventually and when he does, he's going to need to be healthy. I go back into the house after taking the trash out and lock up for the night. I let the dirty dishwater out of the sink and start loading up the dishwasher. I wash my hands after I'm done and go over to the fridge. He's probably not going to want to eat much of anything so I won't make anything too big. I grab a can of Dr. Pepper out of his fridge and stick it on the counter. I pluck a package of beef flavored Ramen Noodles out of the box and start heating up the water on the stove so I can make them for him. While the water is heating up, I grab the broom so I can sweep up the floor.

I have to admit…it's a little empty around here without the sound of her giggles, the sound of her little voice or the sound of her feet walking around. I miss her too. I miss hearing her sweet voice say "goodnight JoeDoe!" I miss her like hell. But I don't want to break down or cry in front of Alex because he's finally okay enough to let me in and if I do that, he might shut me out again. I'll be his rock. I don't have anything wrong with that. I'll be his rock, that's fine. He needs somebody to lean on and I wholeheartedly believe that if it was the other way around, he'd be there for me to lean on too. I sweep my little dirt pile into the dustpan and sigh. It was always Lyla's job to hold the dustpan for me. It was her big girl chore. I dump the dirt into the trashcan and check his noodle water. It's boiling, so I dump the water into the glass bowl that I stuck his noodles in. I cover the bowl with a glass plate so that the steam will stay in and soften the noodles. I turn off the kitchen light and carry the flavoring packet, the bowl and his can of soda up the steps. I don't hear the shower water running anymore so I'm guessing that he got out. I take his food to his bedroom and sure enough, he's sitting on the bed in nothing but his boxers. He looks better. Still not 100% but better, without a doubt.

"I made you something to eat." I put the bowl and the soda down on his nightstand and pick up his t-shirt. I hold the head hole open for him and put it over his head. "…I cleaned up your living room and your kitchen." His face softens when I say that but he still doesn't look at me. I take the bowl off the top and see that the noodles have softened. I tear the flavoring packet open with my teeth and sprinkle it into the bowl. "And I called your job today…" I start mixing the flavoring over the noodles with a fork. "I talked to Arizona…I made sure she knew that you were going through something personal. She said she understood and nullified your no call/no shows." I twirl some noodles up on the fork, blow on them and hold them to his mouth. "Here…eat." He remains still as a statue. "Alex, eat something for me. I know you haven't eaten since Monday. Even if it's just a bite, please eat." He sighs and opens his mouth. "Thank you." I feed him the noodles. He chews slowly. "I've been getting your mail and stuff…"

"I know." He whispers. "…And thank you. I've been a jerk lately but…" His voice trails off and cracks. He closes his eyes and I can tell by the look on his face that he's going to cry.

"Baby…" I put the fork back down and wrap my arms around him. "No…okay? Please no more tears. Please." I stroke his hair and hold his head against my chest. "Please no more tears. It's going to be alright. I promise it's going to be okay. No more tears. You cried enough already." I rub the back of his neck in a gentle, loving motion. "Don't worry about it. I understand…I understand. It's okay though. We don't have to talk about it. We don't have to talk about it." He sniffs hard and picks his head up. "Better?" He just sniffs. "Okay…eat. And we can go to bed. You could use a good night's sleep." He nods his head.

He did have me worried sick to the point of tears earlier but none of that matters now. All that matters to me is that he's okay. We don't have to talk about it. I'm just glad that he's okay.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

The sound of her heart beating is the only thing that's been able to calm me down and lull me on my way to sleep since Monday. I haven't been to sleep since Monday. I can't sleep. How can I sleep when I don't even know if my daughter is? How can I curl up in my nice, warm bed without feeling guilty because I don't know for sure if my daughter has a nice, warm bed to sleep in? I'm beyond tired. I haven't slept in days and I've been doing nothing but crying. Tonight is the only night that I haven't laid in Lyla's bed and cried until the morning light and I know that it's only because Jo is here. She's laying underneath of me, letting me sleep on her chest. My arms are around her waist and my head is in the middle of her chest and I'm listening to her heart. She's rubbing my hair and just letting me go. I didn't realize how much I've missed this woman until she helped me out of the bed and helped me into the shower. I didn't realize how much I needed her until she told me how she's been looking out for me these last few days. I already knew that she was coming to get my mail. I used to lay upstairs in Lyla's bed, listening to her knock every day. I would lay there and wish that I had enough strength to get out of the bed and let her in but I never could.

I wasn't trying to shut Jo out. It wasn't a personal thing. I just wanted to be left alone for a few days and every day, I would tell myself that today was going to be the day that I answered her. I tried so hard every day to get out of the bed when she knocked but I just couldn't. I'd get up, catch a glimpse at the toys in the bedroom that hadn't been properly played with and I would feel terrible all over again and just have to lay back down. The only person I wanted to talk to over these last few days is my dad. I've been calling him every single day and he never answered. He won't answer his phone. I don't know why, all I know is that it's not like my pop to not answer the phone when I call. I thought my dad was the one person I could count on but I was wrong. Jo's the person that I can count on…and I really wish I had called her earlier.

I knew that she would stop by every day to get my mail and see if she could get in, but I had no idea that she thought to call Arizona. She's really been looking out for me. I haven't called anyone but my dad. To be truthful, I completely forgot about work. Nothing just seems important anymore. Work doesn't seem important. The only thing that matters to me is getting my baby back. I don't even know where she's at. I don't know if she's still in Millerton or if she's out of town. I know nothing. I just hope she's not forgetting about me. She's my baby. I hope the people she's with are taking care of her too. If I find out that those people mistreated her, when I get her back, I swear to god I'm beating their asses. If they did anything to hurt or corrupt my daughter while she was in their care, I'll kill someone. I'm already ready to kill my mother. What's two more people added to that list? "…Jo?" I call her name. For the first time in a long time, I don't recognize my voice when it comes out.

"What, baby?" Her voice sounds different but only because I'm laying on her chest and her voice is amplified.

"Thank you for coming." I mumble. She curls her fingers through my hair and strokes the back of my head. "Jo?" I call her name one more time. I have something to tell her. Something I wasn't sure I should tell her but something I'm sure of as of right now. I'm sure of it. She's been getting my mail. She's been coming down my house consistently every single day, despite the fact that I've been a mega dickhead by shutting her out. I threw her out of my house and she still came back. She was there for me when no one else was. I called her and no more than five minutes later, she was here. She came running. She's been here to comfort me, cook for me, clean up after me. She helped me into the shower to bathe myself when I couldn't do it myself. She's not going anywhere. I haven't been the best to her since Monday. But only one good thing has come from the events of Monday. That good thing? Well Monday made me realize that I can tell her what I need to tell her without a shadow of doubt in my mind. "Jo…I love you."

"…Alex, don't tell me…you don't have to…I mean…" She starts stumbling across her words.

"I mean it, Jo." I lift my head up. "It took me a while to decide if I should say it because I don't want to tell you that I do if I don't mean it but I do. I really mean it, okay? I mean it. I wouldn't tell you if I wasn't 100% sure. There's no pressure for me to say it and I don't think it. I'm sure of it. I wasn't so sure of it but all of this…all of this just made me sure. I love you. I'm saying it." I missed looking into her eyes so much. When I look into her eyes, somehow she makes it all better. "…I want to be honest with you…" I keep staring into her eyes. "I don't know if I'm _in_ love with you, but I'm sure that I love you. I do. I don't know if I'd be okay without you…that's how I know. So I don't know if I'm in love…but I do love you."

She nods her head as if she agrees with everything I said. "And I love you too."


	49. Unsafe

**A/N:** **M** rated convent in this chapter.

* * *

Still rubbing my hands over my eyes to formally wake myself up, I make my way to the steps. I stifle a long, drowned out yawn and wrap my hand around the railing to guide myself downstairs. I'm still pretty groggy and my eyes are still filled with sleep, only because I literally just rolled out of bed and headed for the steps. I didn't get all my sleep out at all. Last night was the first time I've slept since Monday and I feel like I could still use a few more hours. The only reason I woke up is because I felt like something wasn't right. I was sleeping…I was sleeping hard, too. I woke up with sleep lines on my face and drool on the pillow I was laying on; that's how I know I was pretty much knocked out cold. But even though I was sleeping that hard, I started to feel like something wasn't right and that feeling made me wake up out of a dead sleep. The feeling came from the fact that Jo got out of the bed and left me alone. I don't usually notice when she wakes up before me but I noticed this morning because I distinctly fell asleep on her chest last night. I fell asleep listening to the sound of her heart beating and I'm fully convinced that she's the only reason I was actually able to fall asleep and sleep as well as I did. I slept like a baby on her chest and when she got up, I felt her absence and I felt the need to wake up. I think I might actually need her to sleep at night.

Once I reach the bottom of the steps, my nose perks up. It smells like a mixture of Clorox and bacon in my house. I rub my eyes again to bring my vision into focus and grumble as I look around. The living room is practically spotless. The couch cushions are fixed, the blanket that drapes across the back of the couch is neatly folded and perfectly placed across it, the coffee table has been wiped clean, the bin with Lyla's pull-ups is organized, closed and placed neatly next to my loveseat and there are even vacuum marks streaking across my carpet. I tiptoe into the kitchen, just to see what exactly it is that I'm smelling. I didn't bother to look at the time on the clock but I'm willing to bet that it's after noon and if she's not gone yet, it must mean that either she doesn't work at all or she works the evening shift. She's been working a lot of mornings lately though so I'm gonna go ahead and assume that she doesn't work at all today. I round the corner to get into the kitchen and stop dead in my tracks once I see that my kitchen is just as spotless as my living room. The floor is slightly wet and the culprit is most likely the mop over in the corner by the door. I don't want to step on her freshly mopped floor while it's still wet so I just stand in the doorway and observe.

My sink is perfectly spotless without a trace of dirty dishes in it, the dish drying rack is empty too and the green light on the dishwasher is blinking, which means that it's empty. The glass on the table appears to have been wiped clean too and on the stove is a small frying pan with bacon sizzling in it. On the counter next to the stove is a plate with fluffy pancakes on it and next to the plate of pancakes is a small plate of scrambled eggs. Jo is standing in front of the stove with her back turned towards me, poking at the bacon. I wonder exactly how long she's been awake for, because I know she had to have spent at least an hour down here; maybe more. I think she even rummaged through her drawer a bit when she woke up because her clothes are different but they're the same clothes that I've been keeping in her drawer. Last night when she came here, she had on a pair of yellow Soffe shorts and a red t-shirt. This morning, she's wearing a light purple tank top and a pair of black and white plaid pajama pants. I distinctly remember putting clothes in her drawer like the ones she has on. I rest my head against the doorframe and just stare at her for a moment.

It was nice to put my entire life on pause the way I did for a little while there but I think it's even nicer to have her around again. Like I said, I didn't mean to shut her out; I just needed a few days to step back and deal with everything that happened. It took me a while to even process what happened. It all felt so surreal at first. Like after everyone left, I had to actually sit back and ask myself if that really happened. It didn't feel like everything was actually happening to me…that's how I ended up in Lyla's room to begin with. Part of me wanted to believe that if I were to go upstairs and look in her room, she'd be there. Of course, she wasn't there and that's how I ended up laying in her bed and not moving for days on end. Anyway, putting everything on hold for a few days was nice but it's even nicer to know that I still have Jo at the very least. I thought for sure that I would've had to do a little bit more begging than I did to get her to come over last night but one of the things that's so great about Jo is that she just gets it. I treated her like shit for a couple days there and I totally wouldn't have blamed her if she just decided to say to hell with me. But she didn't. All I had to do was call her, ask her to come over and she did. That's one of the things that made it so easy for me to tell her that I love her.

I did not realize at all how much I missed this woman until last night. As I spent the majority of my days laying in that tiny little pink bed upstairs, I thought for sure that I was fine without her. I thought that I was fine without everybody. I was content with shutting the world out; especially after not even my dad would answer my phone calls. I still don't know what even possessed me to go downstairs, unlock the door and call Jo. I don't know what went into me making that decision but in hindsight, I'm glad that I did. I don't think I would've ever gotten up out of that bed if I hadn't found the sense that the good lord gave me to call her. I'd probably still be upstairs wasting away, wallowing in self-pity if it wasn't for Jo. I surely wouldn't have a job if it wasn't for her. Because I've been so detached from reality lately that I didn't even think to call my job and tell them that I needed a few days off to deal with the fact that people came into my house and took my daughter away from me. As much as I hate to admit it, I need her. I swore to myself that after Jenna, I would never fall that hard again. I told myself that I wasn't going to put myself in the position to where I needed a woman to get through the day yet here I am, relying on Jo to be my reason for getting up in the morning.

But Jo…she's so…she's so fall-in-love worthy. She's a great woman and if I wasn't sure of that fact before, I'm sure of it now. What kind of girl sticks around a boyfriend that shuts her out for days on end, comes by to get his mail and check on him every day even though he's being an asshole? What kind of girl comes running down the street at 11:30 at night, helps her boyfriend out of bed, helps him shower and makes him eat? Calls his job just to make sure he doesn't get fired? Wakes up in her boyfriend's house, cleans the entire downstairs and still finds enough time to cook brunch? A girl doesn't do that. No, a _woman_ does that. Jo's a damn good woman and I couldn't have handpicked a better woman to be my reason for getting up in the morning. I know I haven't been the greatest to her. I know I haven't really had the strength nor the capability to give as much to her as she gives to me, but I'll get there. I promise I'll get there eventually. Once all this shit with Lyla settles down, I swear I'm going to treat Jo the way she deserves to be treated.

She amazes me, you know? I know she's just a person but she amazes me. She eats, sleeps and breathes just like I do. She's a human; just like me. But sometimes I'm under the impression that she's so much more than human. How is someone equally as beautiful a person on the inside as they are on the outside? And there's nothing about her that I don't love. Now that the floor is officially dry, I want to walk further into the kitchen and maybe wrap my arms around her waist so I can tell her thank you for being here for me. I want to kiss her so bad because I haven't kissed her—really kissed her—since Sunday night. I'm battling with myself though, because just as much as I want to kiss her? I want to just watch her. I want to stare at her, sit here and make sure I understand what kind of woman I have with me. So to meet an internal compromise, I'll watch her for a little bit longer…then I'll go kiss her.

I fold my arms across my chest, adjust my head against the doorframe and keep my eyes locked on her. I like to notice even the most miniscule things about Jo. Like for example, her hair grew quite a bit. When I first met her, it was just barely touching her shoulders. These days, her hair comes down past her shoulders and stops just before it touches where her bra is in the middle of her back. She didn't have enough hair to fashion up into a ponytail when I first met her but now, her hair is in a ponytail and it's long enough to actually pass her neck. Since she has her hair up, I can see the back of her neck and of course, she has beauty marks on her neck and shoulder blades. She has a big one just below the nape of her neck and a bunch of smaller ones scattered about her upper back and shoulders. She reaches over on the counter with the hand she's not using to cook the bacon and presses the side button on her cell phone. It's not until she pushes the button to turn it up that I realize she's been listening to music this entire time. I hadn't been able to hear it until she turned it up a second ago.

I think it's an appropriate time to walk into the kitchen and kiss her now. I've done enough gawking at her for one morning, I think. I take my arms down and stand up straight, but just as I begin to take my first step, she opens her mouth and starts singing….which makes me stop again. I replace my head on the doorframe for a little while longer so I can listen. I'm afraid that she might stop singing if she knows that I'm in here with her. I think she still thinks that she's alone and that's a chance I don't want to take. I've never heard Jo sing before; except for that one time in the hotel room back at Disney and she wasn't being serious. "I know they say you can't go home again…I just had to come back one last time…" She's being very quiet so I guess listening to her sing is pretty pointless if I can't even hear her but something about the softness in her voice is hypnotizing and I can't move. "Ma'am I know you don't know me from Adam…but these handprints on the front steps are mine." She gets just a little bit louder and that's when I really can't move. Most people…most normal people sound horrible when they sing. But not Jo…is there anything she's not good at? I close my eyes and listen to her. "I thought if I could touch this place or feel it, this brokenness inside me might start healing. Out here it's like I'm someone else, I thought that maybe I could find myself…" Her voice got a little bit louder and all of a sudden, I've got chills shooting up my spine. Honestly, I'm not sure if Jo's truly a good singer or if I'm just biased and totally amazed by everything she does. For all I know, she could be horrible and I'm just blinded because I kind of worship the ground this woman walks on. No matter what the case is, I close my eyes and just listen to her. "If I could just come in, I swear I'll leave…won't take nothing but a memory…from the house that…built me." She stops.

I take a deep breath and open my eyes again. She's a beautiful singer, I don't care what anyone says. I mean, she wouldn't win American Idol…but she could sing me to sleep. Still in shock and awe, I pull myself together and walk over to where she's standing. "…I didn't know you knew Miranda Lambert." I put my hands on her shoulders and tilt my head so that I can kiss her on the cheek.

"I don't." I watch her cheeks flush bright red. She's embarrassed. She totally didn't know that I was lingering around in the background listening to her as she sang. "I just grew up around country music. My mom loves the stuff." She clears her throat softly and turns off the stove burner. "So um…good morning." She swiftly changes the subject from the fact that she was just singing a country song and tries to springboard the conversation into something else.

"You sing pretty, Jo." I put my lips against the corner of her mouth and slide my hands down her arms and stop at her waist.

"You heard that?" Her cheeks get even redder. "I'm a horrible singer, you don't have to lie to me." She shrugs out of my grasp and once again, switches the conversation. "So…are you hungry?" I guess she really doesn't want to talk about the fact that she was singing. I've clearly embarrassed her and I don't want to keep doing it so since she made it clear that she really doesn't want to talk about it, I'll let the topic switch. "I made you some lunch…sit down. I'll make your plate." She puts the bacon fork down and turns around. "I was thinking maybe me and you could just chill out for the day. Maybe watch a couple movies…get some real food in your belly. What do you think?" She wraps her arms around my waist and rests her chin against my chest, looking up at me. "Unless you have other ideas?" She situates herself so that her leisure wrap around my waist is now a full-blown hug.

"We can just hang around all day…sounds good to me." I'm trying so hard to remain happy. It's somewhat easy to be in a good mood around Jo because she's trying so hard to hold me up but just knowing what she's trying to hold me up from is enough to make me want to start crying. There's just an elephant in the room at the moment. It's like we both know that just lounging around and chilling out all day shouldn't be possible for the two of us but the only reason it IS possible is because Lyla no longer lives here. We both know that if Lyla was here, we'd have to spend the day trying to entertain her. We both know that Lyla SHOULD be here. My house is so empty without her. It honestly doesn't even feel like home anymore. It feels like four walls and a roof. I don't have a little girl around to feed breakfast and lunch to, so what reason do I have to be awake at 9:00 in the morning? I don't have a little girl around to watch kids' movies with anymore, so what am I supposed to watch on TV? I don't have a life outside of Lyla and I'm not exactly sure how to get one. "...Will you come look at lawyers with me tomorrow?"

"Of course I will, baby." Her hands move along up and down my back. "Anything you need…I'm in this with you. You know that." She raises up on her tiptoes a little and kisses the underside of my chin. "You're gonna get her back, you know." She moves her arms up from around my waist and wraps them around my arms. "And when you get her back, you have to do something fun with her. You should start planning it now." I just shrug. "Alex…baby, you know you're gonna get her back. You know that she's going to be back here eventually, don't you?"

"…I guess." I shrug again. "I mean I guess I know that they're going to find out that I'm innocent eventually and by that point, they're not going to be able to keep her from me. So I guess deep down I know that she's going to be here eventually but…" I sigh. "Jo, it's killing me that she's not here. I just wish I knew that she's okay, you know? She's with strangers. I don't know if they're feeding her and stuff…not knowing is the worst part. It wouldn't be so bad if I was just able to talk to her."

"I know." She rubs my back. "It's gonna be okay though. All these allegations are going to be proven false, the CPS case is gonna be closed and you and Lyla are gonna be fine. It's just going to be a distant memory…something you look back on and say 'damn, I got through that'. I promise, okay? It's not going to do anything but make you and Lyla's relationship stronger. You think for one moment she's not sitting around missing you too?" She starts rubbing the back of my head. "You're gonna get yourself a damn good lawyer and everything's going to be okay." I can't believe I'm about to do what I feel like doing right now. I guess I have to just swallow my pride and hope that Jo will never mention this again. I don't usually let people see me break down and cry but I've let Jo see me cry. I usually don't let people know how vulnerable I am and how much I need them to support me but…It's Jo…and I need her so badly right now. I bend my knees a little and put my head on her shoulder. She rubs the back of my neck with one hand and my hair with the other. "Go 'head baby…let it out." She kills me when she calls me "baby". She says it so naturally and it just flows right off her tongue. The way she says it so fluently…I can just tell that it's something she calls me on the daily. It's something she calls me even when she's not around me.

I sniff and swallow a hard lump in the back of my throat. Here goes nothing…

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I wrap my arms around him as best as I can and gently ease both our bodies down on the ground. Granted, the kitchen floor isn't the most ideal place for him to have a breakdown but I'm totally here for him. He told me that he loves me last night and I love him too and like I said…I love hard. I keep my arms locked around his body and scoot back so that my back is against the cabinets so that I can be comfortable while I'm comforting him. His head is stuffed in my chest and my tank top is already wet with his tears. "Shh…" I rub my fingers across his scalp because I know how much he loves that. "I know." I press my lips to the top of his head, keep them there and keep massaging his scalp. Seeing him break down like this makes me want to break down too. When I think about Alex, I think of the strongest man I know. I think of this big, strong, tough man that bends but never breaks. I always feel so safe, secure and calm whenever he's around because Alex…he's Alex, you know? He's Alex…the strongest man I know. Seeing him act this way, completely breaking all the way down…it's gut-wrenching for me. It's like watching my own personal superhero being defeated.

"I don't know where she's at…" His crying voice sends my stomach twisting and turning into knots. He's blubbering like a baby. I'm not by any means judging him. He has every single reason in this world to be distraught and upset. But I don't ever want to hear him cry like this again. This is something I'd hear in my nightmares. It's my own personal hell, hearing the man I love being brought to tears like this. "I hear stories about foster care all the time. They could be in there hurting her and I can't do anything about it, Jo. She's probably crying for me. I'm…" His voice cracks. Tears line the rims of my eyes but I'd be selfish to let them fall so I hold them back. "I'm her daddy. I'm supposed to be the one protecting her. She's probably crying for me and I'm not there. She's only a baby, Jo. And…And you know how she is. She's probably so scared right now, not talking, not eating…I just don't understand how they think this is good for her. I'm not a child molester…I don't hurt her. I wouldn't do any of that. I didn't do anything and they took her…" I kiss the middle of his forehead and just listen. "And then the one person I should be able to count on…he won't answer me. I called him so many times, Jo. I called him so many times and he won't even answer. Like…he's my dad. He's my dad…he should be here for me."

I don't have the heart to tell him that his dad is in on the whole thing but…I mean he has a right to know. He told me not to tell Alex that we talked but look at him. He's bawling his eyes out in my arms. He deserves to know that his dad is the biggest fucking backstabber in the world, doesn't he? Maybe I shouldn't tell him right now though. I'll tell him eventually…but not right now. Not while he's currently having a breakdown. Telling him that would make things worse. I'll tell him. I swear to god I'll tell him…but not right now. Telling him right now seems wrong. "I know, baby. I know…" I whisper to him and continue caressing the back of his neck. "It's gonna be okay though. You're a good dad…they're gonna see that."

"It's just not fair. It's not fair to her. She lost her mom…they should have some respect for that. I'm the one person in this world she's got left and they just take her away? That should be considered child abuse. They can't just rip a child away from their parent like that. They can't do that…" He sniffs again. "What if this scars her? What if this messes her up for life, being snatched away from her home like that?"

"She's tough. She'll get through it." I assure him. "She endured 12 hours of being poked, prodded and stabbed with needles in that hospital on Saturday and she didn't even flinch. She made it through her mother's death and she's still okay. She's really tough…and that's because you raised her to be. You raised her to be tough. She'll get through it because you raised her to be tough. She can handle it. You know Lyla." He just sniffs and lays on my chest. I don't feel any more tears coming out but I'm still gonna let him stay on my chest. "…Why don't you tell me a story about her? Might make you feel better. Tell me something about her…" I start stroking the middle of his back next. He remains silent. "Come on Alex…tell me a story about her. Something funny…something that happened that made you laugh."

"…About….two or three months after Jenna died…" His voice is still croaky with tears so he clears his throat. "Well for a while after Jenna died…we kind of just coexisted. We didn't talk much or anything really. But she followed me around a lot. She learned how to hop out of my bed without hurting herself so she followed me to the bathroom one morning and she watched me do my usual morning routine…brush teeth, wash face, shave…you know." He clears his throat again. "She saw me shave. And later on that day, I caught her upstairs in my bathroom with my shaving cream all over her face. She was sitting on the sink, looking in the mirror and scraping it off with a hair comb…and when I asked her what she was doing, she looked so guilty and she told me she was…she said she was 'saving'." I think he smiles a bit, which is good. My little strategy worked if he's smiling. "So from that moment on, I made up her own morning routine. She would wake up with me every morning, brush her teeth, wash her face and then I would put her on the sink and we would shave together. I picked the blades out of one of my razors and gave it to her. She felt so grown up…we still shave together sometimes. Sometimes I guide her hand so she can help me shave. But ever since I caught her, it's kind of been our thing."

"You let her help you shave?" He nods his head. I laugh, just to show him that it's okay if he does too. "That's so sweet…" I rub his hair. "Got anymore?"

"Yeah, one time she hit me in the balls…because she thought I had a snake in my pants…" He starts laughing so hard that I can't help but laugh right along with him. "I told you she followed me around quite a bit after Jenna died. She followed me in the bathroom one day and caught me…you know how…you know how us guys have to shake it after we pee? Well she caught me while I was shaking it and I guess she thought I was wrestling with it or whatever and I remember coming out the bathroom and bam…right in the balls. She said she didn't want the snake to bite me." He's laughing so hard that his entire body is shaking. "I had to explain to her the difference between boys and girls at that moment. Jo, you should've seen the look on her face…" He's still dying of laughter.

I'm glad I could make him happy…even if it is only for a little while.

 **X X X**

"Are you sure you're full?" I pull the blankets back on his bed so we can get in between them. He should be full, considering the fact that he ate six pancakes, more than half of the eggs and five pieces of bacon. Alex is a really big guy so as I was cooking for him, I was considering that. He eats so, so, so much. Me? I was content with two pancakes, three pieces of bacon and only a little bit of eggs. It doesn't take much to fill me up but then again, I'm comparing my petite 5'5, 130 pound frame to his 6'0, 200 pounds. He nods his head and takes off his t-shirt. This must be what life is like without Lyla…and I must say, it's pretty boring. It feels weird that Alex and I can just take a nap whenever we feel like it. We ate, sat on the couch and watched TV for no more than an hour and eventually, we decided that we're going to take a nap. "Alright. When we get up, I'll fix us something for dinner." I turn off the light, close the curtains and take off my pants so I can get in the bed too.

We both climb into the bed and settle in to our respective places. Just as I expected him to, Alex scoots over towards me and lays right on my chest. I wrap my arms around him and collapse my head down on top of his. "…Night, Jo." He whispers, nestling his head between my boobs to get comfortable. I don't say anything back. I just run my fingers through his hair at a rhythmic pace in the same way I did until he fell asleep last night. With my free hand, I pull the covers up over him to make sure he's cozy. I've been walking on eggshells around him just to make sure that I don't say or do anything to set him off because his moods have been all over the place today. One minute he's alright, talking to me and sneaking up on me while I'm sleeping. Next minute, something will happen that reminds him of Lyla and he's having a breakdown again. I think he's going to be okay though. I'm not much of an Alex expert but I do know enough about him to know that today is most likely the first time he's allowed himself to feel. I'm guessing those days that he spent upstairs wasting away in Lyla's bed, he was numb to everything and not allowing himself to feel anything. I'm guessing that every emotion he's numbed himself to is now coming back and flooding him to the point where he doesn't know how to deal with things. I'll walk on eggshells for as long as he needs me to. I really think he'll be okay once he gets through all of this. We're gonna go talk to lawyers after I get off of work tomorrow and that'll make him feel better too. I'm gonna get him through this. I'm promising MYSELF that I'm going to get him through this. "…Jo? You still up?"

"Mhm." I nod my head. He lifts his head up and looks at me. "What's wrong?" His eyes are soft, so soft that he looks like a child, about to ask permission to do something. His look is innocent and pure, heartbreaking much to me. "Alex, what's the matter?" I think he's about to cry again, which is surprising to me because I don't even know what his trigger could've been. All the times he's broken down on me thus far, I was able to pinpoint an exact trigger, make a mental note of said trigger and make sure that I never say or do that trigger again. But I don't even know what could've set him off this time. Instead of bursting out into tears like I was expecting him to, he stretches his neck out and kisses me on my lips. He did it so suddenly that I didn't have time to close my eyes, tilt my head and prepare for it. Surprised, I close my eyes after he's already kissing me and put my hands on the back of his head. He doesn't use tongue on me. He just kisses me hard, so hard that my head smashes back into the pillow. Passionately, so passionately that I can feel every emotion he's trying to convey to me through the kiss and ultimately, with nothing but lips. When he pulls away, I open my eyes back up and I'm met with his soft green/brown ones. He brings his hand up and tangles it into my mess of a ponytail. "…You okay?" I ask him. Still gazing into my eyes, he nods. "What was that for?"

"Because I love you." The way he looks into my eyes when he says that, I can just tell that he means it. "And I don't think you know how much I mean it when I say that but I do. I know it probably doesn't seem like I do but…I'm just…I'm not myself right now Jo…but I promise I'll show you. I'll show you that I mean it…" He kisses me again.

"Whoa…" I swerve out of the kiss and put my finger against his lips. "Alex, I believe you. I believe you. I know you're going through something right now and I'm not some unfeeling bitch that's insensitive to that. You don't have to explain yourself to me. I know you mean it. You show me every day that you mean it. You don't have to…" I shake my head at him. "You don't have to belittle your feelings just because you think that I don't know that you mean it. I know you mean it. I know you wouldn't have said it if you didn't mean it." He sighs. "I believe you…there's nothing you can do to show me that you mean it more than I already know that you do. It's okay."

"…Jo stop, okay?" He pushes my finger away from his mouth and holds himself up over me. "Look…I was thinking…" He seems nervous about something. He looks away from me and over at his pillow before his eyes meet mine again. "I was thinking last night that everything that happened with us…when we tried…you know…" He's beating around the bush pretty hard. He sighs hard as a sign of him swallowing his pride and just looks at me. "I think all the other times were a bust because I wasn't going to do it…lovingly. I was just doing it to seal a deal with myself, you know? To just…seal off our relationship. I wasn't going to do it lovingly. And now that I told you…now that I actually love you…" He's really, really, really bad at emotions and telling me how he feels so I'll just put him out of his misery.

"Shhh." I put my finger back against his lips to shut him up and raise my head just a little. "…You wanna make love to me…" He says nothing. His eyes just drop and his face falls, like he just embarrassed himself or something like that. I could kind of see where he was getting at with his lackluster explanation of his feelings because I was feeling the same way. Last night after we both proclaimed our love, it felt to me like something fell into place. It was like all the puzzle pieces came together and I realized exactly why it's been so hard for us to actually have sex all the times we failed at it before. It wasn't always because we weren't alone, it wasn't because we kept getting interrupted and it wasn't because we were miscommunicating. Because I fully believe that if we really wanted to have sex, we could've done it while Lyla was asleep all those times, we could've resumed that time Jimmy called him and interrupted us and miscommunication wouldn't have been an issue. All the times we failed at having sex was because we were doing it for the wrong reasons and we both knew that. We were just having sex to have fun and that's not where we're at in our relationship. We failed at having sex because we were trying to do it for the wrong reasons...I love him now. I love him now and we should make love…not just have a quickie that's for fun. "Is that what you're trying to say?" He nods slowly. A smile creeps across my face and when he sees me smiling, he grins too.

He lowers his face back down to mine and we share another kiss.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

My fingers trace the bare skin on her back as she reaches back to free her hair of the ponytail it's been in all morning. My face is in the crook of her neck, kissing around gently, just enough to let her know that I really do love her and admire her. Once she takes her ponytail out, her hair springs free and spirals down to tickle my hands. I open my mouth a little bit, suck on her neck and brush my fingertips very lightly across her back. Her skin is so soft and smooth against mine; perfection just like Jo always is. I'm honestly not entirely sure if this is the right time for this to happen but I'm also not sure if we'll ever get a moment that's as perfect as this. Finally, she knows that I love her and if we have sex at this point in our relationship, she'll know that it's not just sex to me. She'll know that it's something more than sex. It might not be the right time, considering the fact that I'm dealing with a bunch of emotional shit right now but when is there ever going to be a moment like this again? We professed our love for each other…what better way to consummate that than to make love? Good, old-fashioned lovemaking too. No oral sex, no rough, wild, crazy positions. Just me on top, doing the work and showing her what she means to me. I'll have plenty more times in the bed with Jo to show her exactly what kind of man I am when it comes to sex but we'll only have one first time together.

She forces my face back to hers and we share yet another deeply passionate kiss. Our tongues swirl around one another with so much heightening emotion that it's hard to contain myself. I struggle but keep my hands calm around her waist. I don't want to violate her or make this any rougher than what true lovemaking is. It's going to be hard to control myself when she's as perfect, sexy and beautiful as she is but I'm going to do it. Since we're both sitting up, enjoying each other's mouths, I guide her gently to the pillow she's going to lay on. It's been perfect so far and I really don't want to mess this up. I undressed her before I undressed myself and showered her beautiful body with kisses. Careful not to hurt her, I make sure I keep all my weight on my own frame before I transfer it to hers. With her arms wrapped around my neck, she pulls me down on top of her and shifts her body weight in a way that allows me to put mine on top of her. I steady myself using her waist and my groin brushes up against her sex. I rest the palms of my hands on either side of her head, right between her shoulder divots and look down at her. She looks at me like she's completely trusting of me, which makes me feel a different level of responsibility. Like I'm responsible for being gentle with her and making sure she ends up being completely pleasured.

She rests her hands in the middle of my back, as if she's giving me consent to go ahead and take this further. It's been a while since I've had sex and it's been even longer since I've actually made love to a woman before. I'm not sure if I remember quite how to do this but I'm going to have to learn pretty quickly. I hold myself up with one hand and use the other to reach below my waist and guide myself inside of her. I put the tip of my erection at her entrance and replace my hand back up near her head. Her eyes are closed and her eyebrows are slightly contorted, which means that I'm hurting her, I think. Instead of making a forceful thrust inside her body, I very slowly ease myself into her inch by inch. Oh god I'm going to have such a hard time keeping this slow and intimate. She's fiercely hot, equally as wet and so impossibly tight. It's going to be harder than I thought to keep this intimate. She slides her leg up so that her knee is bent and her foot is resting flat against the bed. Her other leg is flat against the bed and both her hands are on my back. I keep inching myself inside of her until eventually, our stomachs are touching and I'm all the way inside. She bears down on her lip with her teeth and tilts her head so that her chin is raising up towards the ceiling.

I take my hands away from being positioned next to her head and lie down flat on top of her. Once I'm completely on top of her, her other leg comes up so that it's bent at the knee, a position mirroring the first leg she put up. I tuck my face in the crook of her neck, kissing it here and there before I start rocking back and forth. It's all coming back to me now. Sure it's been a while since I've actually had to make love to a woman but it's all coming back to me. I know that I should start out rocking; not thrusting because rocking gets her clit pretty good. I'm rocking back and forth at a pretty even pace and I can tell that she's starting to feel the pleasure from it because she doesn't know what to do with her hands and that's a dead giveaway. Her hands go from my back to my head and back down to my back. She's breathing hard but she's not moaning. Still kissing her neck, I prop myself up again and draw my pelvis back, away from hers. I make the first thrust into her hard, so deep that her legs have no choice but to part further. "Huh!" She moans pretty loud with that first thrust and I can tell that moaning really isn't something she does a lot. That moan sounded like she didn't even expect for it to come out. I draw back again, slower this time but make the exact same, deep, penetrating thrust again. Her fingernails dig into my back with that one but another moan doesn't come out. Once I'm sure she's comfortable with the idea of me pumping in and out of her, I brace myself by putting my hands on her hips and go to town on her.

I have to keep a rhythm in my head because it'll be easy to get carried away. I try to keep the pumping at an even 1…2…1…2 kind of pace. She's so damn wet. I have to close my own eyes and think about something totally different because if I think about how good she feels, I'm going to do two things. One, I'm going to end up piss-pounding her and two, I'm going to bust within a matter of minutes. I've never had a woman that was tight and wet enough to make me want to cum within a matter of seconds yet here I am, trying to hold back with Jo. I can usually last for about an hour before I feel the need to bust but I really have to concentrate on something other than her hole if I'm going to last another second. I pick up the pace just a little and she notices. She squeezes the skin on my back and wraps her legs around my waist. NO. She CAN'T do that. I put my hands on her knees and force her legs from around my waist. If she wraps those legs around my waist, she's going to end up pissed off and dissatisfied because I WILL cum. She catches my drift and puts her legs back down again. I grab onto both of her hands, hold them over her head and…I really tried to keep this intimate, but I can't. I hold her hands over her head and go crazy.

"Oh my fucking…" Her voice is breathy. She opens her legs up wider for me and starts moving _with_ me. As I'm thrusting downward, she's elevating her hips upward and she's following my motions…this woman is trying to kill me. I was kind of expecting her to just lay there and let me do the work but no. She's really trying to kill me. First she's all tight and wet and now she's…she's basically fucking me right back. She's trying to kill me. Her moan is the sexiest thing I've ever heard. I know she said she's not a moaner but she could've fooled me because this entire bedroom is filled with the sounds of her whimpering. I lean down and kiss her on her lips to let her know that I'm still trying to make love to her, but I end up just getting a mouthful of moans. She does, however, bite down on my bottom lip to reciprocate the kiss. We tried to keep this gentle and passionate but I don't think either one of us can keep up with that. At least we can say that we tried.

I slow my thrusting down a little but only because I'm about to turn her over so I can go from the back for a little while. At least if I'm going doggystyle, I can control the pace better and hopefully I'll last longer than I think I'm going to. But…as I bring my hands to her hips to pull myself out of her so we can switch positions, I look down…and I see two little pink scars… I rub my fingers along her hip replacement scars and immediately, I nix the whole from-the-back plan. I forgot. I forgot that she's probably hurting a little bit during this…and she's probably going to be in a whole lot of pain after this. I can't be too hard on her. The scars…the scars are just a reminder of how much I actually do love her. So with that, I keep myself inside of her. I kiss her on her lips and slow the pace of the sex down again. I don't have to pound her. I can be gentle. She deserves gentle. I kiss her lips softly and start rocking back and forth once again. "Love you…" I kiss her earlobe and stuff my face back in her neck.

"Mmmm…I love you too…" Instead of scratching my back this time, she rubs it. I feel her getting wetter with every rocking motion I make, so I know she's enjoying this just as much as she would enjoy the rougher stuff. "Alex…" She moans my name, which makes me smirk.

I'm glad I can make her enjoy it even if I'm being gentle.

 **X X X**

I feel her breath tickling the hair on my chest. It's kind of annoying but more than that, it's reassuring, which is why I let it go. As long as her breath is tickling my chest, I know she's breathing and I'll take that over annoying any day. It's a nice change to have her laying on my chest as opposed to me laying on hers. Her head is in the middle of mine, her leg is draped across my body and her arms are wrapped around me. I don't think she's sleeping but she's being really still. I trace little circles on her shoulder with my fingertip as I think about what we just did. We finally had sex. Finally, me and Jo had sex. After what seemed like half a billion failed attempts, we actually did it. And I must say…it was totally worth the wait. It didn't last as long as my sexual encounters usually last. It wasn't as rough and wild as my sexual encounters usually are. But I can safely say that I just had the best sex I've ever had in my life. It only lasted about half an hour and the roughest we got was the moments leading up to me almost switching positions. It wasn't real fast paced and vigorous and it wasn't long at all but I wouldn't take it back or do anything different. I think it was just plain perfect for us.

I feel better. I'm not completely happy…I probably won't be completely happy until all of this bullshit I'm involved with is solved. But I do feel better. I feel a hell of a lot better, actually. Maybe it's the fact that I had sex that's making me feel better. Yeah, maybe I'm basking in some kind of incredible afterglow, but either way it goes, I feel better. "Jo?" I call her name but she doesn't answer. "Jo, I know you're not sleeping. Can you hear me?" She sighs hard and nods her head. "Are you okay?" She nods again. I think the sex made her tired. I'll let her go to sleep but not until I find out if she's alright. I want to know if she's in any pain. I'm glad I remembered her scars before I did something crazy like put her legs over her head or whatever. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt her. "Are you sure? …If you're aching, you can tell me. You know I'll rub you down…" She says nothing. Yeah, she's really tired. "You sure you're okay?" She nods. I would ask her more questions…like if it was good for her and if she came or whatever but I already know the answers. It was good enough to make her scream my name out, so I'm guessing it was good for her. And she made a mess of my quilt, so I know she came. She literally made me stop, get off of her and put her on top of the quilt because she didn't want to get my sheets soaking wet the way she did when I went down on her last week. So now my quilt is soaking wet sitting over in the corner, waiting to be washed. I guess the quilt is better than the sheets and the mattress. "Are you tired?" She nods her head again. "You wanna take that nap now?" Another nod. "Okay…let's go to sleep."

"Wait, Alex…" She mumbles, her voice raspy and thin from being worn out. "I have something to tell you…it's about your dad…" She opens her eyes. "Before I tell you this, just know that—" All of a sudden, she's interrupted by the sound of my phone ringing. Whatever she was about to tell me, I'm sure it was very important. She said it's about my dad, so I'm assuming that it's pretty important but I really need to check my phone. I don't mean to cut her off, but I really need to take this call. It could be a lawyer or someone calling to tell me something about Lyla. I innocently put my finger up, signaling for her to wait a moment and she meekly nods her head, yawning in the process. Careful not to knock her off my chest, I reach over on my nightstand and grab my phone. It's a strange number that I don't know but like I said, it could be anyone.

I slide my thumb across the screen and answer it. "Hello?" I spit out in the most polite voice I can conjure up.

"Alex? It's me…I need you to do something." The voice on the other end of the phone is familiar…and it makes my blood start to boil. "Alex, you still there?"

"Dad?" I sit up in the bed, making sure the blanket stays draped across my bottom half. Jo's face is white like she saw a ghost. She doesn't look tired anymore, just plain concerned. How ironic. She was getting ready to tell me something about my dad and he just so happened to FINALLY return my calls. "Dad, what the hell?! I've been calling you and calling you…where the hell have you been?! Why haven't you called me back?! And what's wrong with your phone?!"

"Alex, listen to me. Are you listening?" He sounds like he's rushing.

"No Dad, YOU listen! It's been hell for me these last few days! I've been calling you nonstop!" I'm so pissed. I was actually expecting him to be half dead somewhere on the side of the road…that's the only way I'm going to accept him ignoring my calls and not being here for me during this time. "Where the hell have you been?!"

"Alex, I CAN'T talk to you right now. You need to listen to what I'm telling you to do, okay? LISTEN to me for once in your damn life. Just listen."

"Fine, I'm listening…" I mumble.

"I need you to go outside in the back. In the backyard, okay? It's safe there. Go outside in your backyard. Right now, you hear me? Go."

"Dad, what the hell?"

"GO." And with that, he hangs up the phone.


	50. Family Oriented

I take the phone away from my ear slowly and just stare at it. That was without a doubt the strangest conversation I've ever had with anybody, let alone my father. I'm so confused and I don't need to be confused right now. I'm already going through enough with everything that's going on with Lyla; I don't need to add confusion from my father to that mix. How come I knew that some other bullshit was going to happen? For a little while there, I was actually starting to feel better. The little bit of intimacy I was able to share with Jo really put a boost on my mood and I was riding out that high up until the moment my dad called. Call me crazy, but I had a feeling that something like this was going to happen. I was actually starting to feel happy again and I was expecting something to swoop in and take that away from me since that seems to be the theme with my life. It's happened too many times for me to not expect it. It happened when I was happy with Jenna and she died, it happened when I was starting to be happy with Jo and CPS came in and took my kid and now I was just finally able to make love to my girlfriend and my dad had to call and ruin the aftermath.

I don't know what to think right now. I don't know if I should be thinking that there's something seriously wrong my dad considering the fact that I haven't spoken to him in days and when he finally does call me, he cuts the conversation short and sounds like he's panicking. Or I don't know if I should be angry with him for the fact that I haven't spoken to him in days and when he finally does call me, he cuts the conversation short and sounds like he's panicking. My emotions have been pretty much a mess in the recent days. I hold my phone in my hands and look over at Jo. She's still pretty much translucent. Her face is pale white, her eyes are glassed over and if I didn't know any better, I'd say that she's going to throw up. She clearly knows something that I don't know but I don't have time to ask her exactly what that something is at the moment. I really do want to know what she was going to tell me about my dad because I'm willing to bet that whatever it is, it could provide me some insight as to what I might have to go outside for, but it can wait. The way my dad sounded on the phone, it really sounded like he meant for me to go outside at this very moment and I've already wasted enough time just sitting around. "I have to go outside. My dad told me to go outside in my backyard." I get up out of the bed and don't bother putting my boxers back on. Instead, I just shove my legs into my pajama pants and pull them up on my waist. I hurry up and yank a shirt over my head. I turn back around to grab my phone again and when I do, I see that she's getting dressed too. Her face is still colorless and her eyes are still wide but sure enough, she's shoving clothes onto her body too. "Jo, you stay here." I hold my hands out to stop her. "I don't know what all of this is about and I want you to stay here. I don't want you getting hurt, you hear me? Stay right here."

"Alex, I'm not letting you go alone. I…I can't." She shakes her head. "I can't just sit here while you're down there. You…you don't know what your dad is capable of." The look in her eyes suggests that she knows something MAJOR that I don't know. She looks like she has something to tell me and it's killing her that she hasn't. Like I said, I really want to know what it was that she had to tell me about my dad but I don't have time to get into a deep conversation with Jo right now. She looks away from me as if it's too painful to look in my eyes. "I'll…I'll stay in the house but I'm not letting you go down there alone."

"…Fine." I sigh. There's no sense in arguing with Jo sometimes but there really is no sense in arguing with her right now since I'm sure that it's not an argument that I would win first of all and second of all, I don't really have time to argue with her. I snatch up my cell phone and without further word, I make a beeline for the steps. I have no idea what this is about and no idea what my dad is talking about when he says that it's "safe" in the backyard but I guess I'm about to see. I'm beyond irritated that after ignoring my calls for days straight, he finally calls me back on a strange number and tells me that he can't talk to me but more than irritated, I'm nervous. I'm nervous about what I'm going to go into my backyard and find. First of all, my dad's a naturally goofy kind of guy so when he's being serious about something, it's so easy to tell because he's NEVER serious about something unless it's something very important. He was serious as a heart attack on the phone. Second of all, my dad and I are pretty tight. He's close with all of us; Aaron and Amber included but it's no secret that he and I have always had a bond that's more special. My Pop's my best friend and he's told me on more than one occasion that I'm his as well. Because we're so close, I know that he wouldn't just stay away from me for no reason; especially after knowing that Lyla—his first and only grandchild—was taken away and put into foster care. I know my dad…he just wouldn't do that to me. And more than he wouldn't do that to me, he damn sure wouldn't do it to Lyla. Lyla's my dad's heart. He adores her…everyone does.

Understandably so, I'm beyond nervous about what I might find in my backyard. I'm not scared—I'm nervous. After having my daughter taken away from me, there isn't much that scares me anymore. Having Lyla taken away is the scariest thing I can think of and well, since that came true, there isn't much that can scare me after that. With Jo following close on my heels, I jog down the steps and go through the laundry room to get to the back door. Whatever it is, it sounded like it could've been dangerous and if it is dangerous, I want her to stay out of it. So before I open the door to step out into my backyard, I turn around and put my hands on Jo's shoulders. "Stay right here, Jo…" Her eyes are still glossed over but she's looking at me like she's listening. I really hope there isn't danger involved here. I would hate to do that to her. "And here." I hand her my phone and put my hands on her cheeks. "I want you to call the police if I scream your name, okay? Don't hesitate…If you hear me say your name, call the police." She nods her head at me, worry clear across her face. I stroke my hands across her cheeks and kiss her forehead as a sign of reassurance. "Love you." She nods again and stands near the washing machine. Finally, I take a deep breath and bravely open up the back door. I won't lie. I'm worried as hell right now. I just don't know what to expect going out here. It sounded pretty serious with the way my dad was panicking and rushing me off the phone and I know that my dad is hardly ever serious about anything. It sounds like something with danger involved. I'm worried shitless right now but I don't want Jo to know that. I want her to think that I'm brave enough to handle this; whatever it is. She's been my rock since yesterday…time for me to be hers. I take another deep, calming breath and step out onto my back porch. I look around.

I don't see anything…and I don't know if that fact relieves me or scares the hell out of me. All I see is the grass that grows in my yard, Lyla's pink battery powered car off towards the sticker bush, the chain-link fence that goes around the perimeter of the yard, the trashcans and the "forest" of palm trees that separate my property from the alleyway that runs behind my house. It looks like my normal backyard to me. I keep looking around for a sign but I see nothing…nothing at all. I wrap my hand around the railing to my stairs and cautiously walk down the steps that'll lead me into my yard. My left foot just barely touches down on the grass when suddenly, the sound of a car's horn blares and makes me jump right out of my damn skin. My head instinctively turns in the direction that the sound came from and my rest my hand over my heart since it's thundering. I take a few breaths to calm myself down when it becomes clear that the beep came from my dad's red pickup truck. My dad's truck is pulled up on the side of my house as if it's trying to be hidden because any other time he comes over for a visit, he just parks behind my car in my driveway. I wrinkle my brow and narrow my eyes a bit. He sticks his hand out the window and motions for me to go over to him. I nod my head to let him know that I caught his drift, rest my hands down into the pockets of my pajama pants and start walking toward him. As I make my way over to the fence that closes off the side of my house from my neighbor's property, my dad opens his door and steps out as well. "Dad? What's going on?" I decide that starting off our conversation by chastising him for not answering my damn calls probably won't be the best way to go, so I keep my tone calm. He looks like his normal self, which confuses me further because I don't know why he was rushing now. I'm doing a visual onceover just to see if I can maybe find something medically wrong with him to justify the reason he was rushing the call but I can't find anything. He has his normal paint-stained blue jeans on, his boots and a wrinkled white t-shirt with a ball cap on his head. "What did you mean when you said that it's safe back here? Why haven't you been answering my calls?" The questions start and I can't help them from spewing out because there's a boatload of things I want to ask him.

"Did Jo tell you we talked?" He totally ignores the questions I just asked him and asks his own. He has a little bit of worry in his eyes but not much, which again…confuses me. I shake my head slowly. He talked to Jo? Is that what she was trying to tell me? Does she know what this was all about? And she didn't tell me? "Okay, good…good. Good." He breathes a sigh of relief, nods his head a bunch of times and all the worry in his eyes goes away. "I meant that it's safe…as in nobody will see us back here. Not that you're in any apparent danger." He explains, which relieves me but still leaves me with more questions than answers. "…Tell Jo to come out here. I know she's in there…she's watching from the window." He motions with his head, which makes my eyes go over to the window of the laundry room. Sure enough, she's peeking out of it and watching us.

I wave for her to come out and as soon as I do, the blinds close and she disappears. It isn't long before the back door opens up again and she's coming out of it. She steps out onto the porch and if looks could kill, my father would've dropped dead about three seconds ago. She's mad at my dad for some reason; it's written all over her face. Jo's not the kind of girl that's very good at disguising how she feels because her every emotion is written on her face. Her eyebrows are all wrinkled and she's giving my dad the death glare. "Come down here..." I motion with my hand again. I watch her bite down on her lip and unbawl her hands up from being in fists. She stomps down the flight of steps and angrily walks over towards me and my dad, who's still standing on the other side of the fence. I put my hand on her shoulder and turn to face her. "Why didn't you tell me that you talked to my dad?"

She gets instantly defensive by shrugging my hand off her shoulder and turning towards my dad. I'd be lying if I said that I've never seen Jo fly off the handle and get angry because I have, but I can honestly say that I've never seen her fly off the handle this quickly. All I did was ask her a simple question. "Because he told me not to!" She yells. I just keep quiet and that seems to be the theme for all of us. I don't know what else to say. Why would my dad tell Jo not to tell me that they talked? My dad's silent too, guilt written all over his face. It seems like Jo's the only one that has a word to say between the three of us. "…How could you, Jimmy?" She tilts her head, her look nothing but accusatory. "How could you have anything to do with Lyla getting taken away? THAT'S the reason you've been staying away, isn't it?! Tell Alex…tell him all about how you stabbed him in the back." Jo folds her arms across her chest. "I kept your precious little secret but I think it's time for YOU to tell him what you did." She quiets down and leaves the door open for my dad to say something, which he doesn't. He doesn't say anything at all, he just looks at the fence and sighs. Is what she saying…true?

There's never been a time that I can recall my dad ever lying to me and for that reason, I don't know much about what his body language is like when he is lying. I do know that staying silent when accused of something is usually a sign of admittance though. And he's as silent as they come. Not my Pop…he wouldn't do that to me. I shake my head in disbelief. My Pop wouldn't hurt me like that. "Dad?" I call his name, trying to coax him into saying something to me…something that'll suggest that what Jo is saying is wrong. I really need Jo to be wrong. "Dad, really?" I tilt my head and feel tears stinging. How could he betray me? It makes sense of that's what he was doing…he was staying away. He was staying away because he's part of the reason Lyla got taken away? What the hell did he tell them?! What the hell is he trying to do to me? And Jo…how could she keep this from me? She knew the entire time and she didn't tell me? What the hell? Isn't there ANYONE that's been loyal to me? "…Dad, you're…you…" I look at Jo, tears clouding my vision. She looks pissed and she's just looking at my dad and waiting for an explanation. "You _helped_ mom get her taken away from me? That's why you were staying away?"

"No, no, no." Finally, he speaks to me and he shakes his head as well, denying everything. "You've got it all wrong! That's not why I was staying away! Dammit you two…" My dad flails his hands as if he's trying to tell us to keep it down. He grits his teeth together and rolls his eyes up to the sky. "I don't think either one of you realize how bad this could be if anybody knew that I was here talking to you two, let alone telling you anything." He rubs his face like he's been nothing but stressed, pulling the skin on his cheeks down. "…The two of you can't say anything about any of this, alright?" He sounds as if he's finally come to a decision but didn't come to it lightly. "Alexander." He looks directly at me. I nod my head once, giving him my word. "Jo?" He looks at her next. Jo still looks totally pissed and totally convinced that her accusations are true. "I can't tell you unless the both of you swear on your lives you won't say anything. You have to act like I was never even here and you have to act like what I'm about to do never happened."

"Fine." Annoyed, Jo shrugs her shoulders. "I'll keep my mouth shut." I can't believe she's so worked up and pissed off over the possibility of my dad betraying me. She's really pissed off over this and although I wish she had told me about it initially, I actually really like the fact that she's mad at my dad. The fact that she's mad at my dad means something. She's pissed off over something that doesn't even involve her, but she's pissed off because it involves me getting hurt. She really must love me.

"Either of you ever hear of relative placement?" He asks, looking both of us in our eyes as he talks. I shake my head and so does Jo. "It's when…" He licks his lips, clearly apprehensive about telling us. I tilt my head to the side to let him know that I'm getting impatient for an explanation here. "CPS would rather place kids with family members instead of sticking them in foster care and most times, the kid does end up being in the temporary custody of a family member. The family member has to be blood-related." He looks at Jo when he says that. "But, the family member also has to be approved before they can have custody of the kid. The family member has to prove that they're actually related to kid, prove that their home is suitable, pass a background check and provide proof of child abuse clearances. These things could take weeks…or in my case, could take five days." He mumbles that last part. I raise my eyebrows. If he's saying what I think he's saying… "During this time, said family member is not _allowed_ to have contact with the parent that the child was taken off of, because this family member is supposed to be keeping the child safe. If it is discovered that the family member is having contact with the parent that was abusing the child, the relative placement is called off, the child is stuck back in foster care and it's counted as a violation of the code or whatever and both the parent and the family member can and will be sent to prison." From the corner of my eye, I see Jo bring her hand up and clasp it over her mouth. "Yeah. I've been working towards getting my clearances and doing all the necessary stuff to bring her home with me. But I wasn't allowed to talk to you two while I was doing this because it could've ruined my credibility. I'm not supposed to be here, I'm not supposed to be talking to you and I'm surely not supposed to do what I have Michelle doing. But you're my son and I guess it's a risk I'm willing to take. But you two have to keep quiet about this…do you understand this?"

"…So you have her? You have her, dad?" I'm about to start crying and I'm not sure how, but Jo knows that I am and she puts her hand against my arm, which gives me enough strength to hold the tears back. "She's not with a bunch of strangers anymore? She's with you?"

"My clearances came in this morning, I took them down to domestic relations, the caseworkers contacted the foster family and they went to go pick her up and bring her down to the child center. Michelle and I went to get her about an hour ago. They had her up at a house in Pensacola…she was with some good people but yeah…she's home now. She's with me." Hearing him confirm that my daughter actually is with him, with familiar people and in an environment where I know she's safe…I can't contain myself anymore. I hold onto the fence for support, put my head down and the tears start streaming down. "She's gonna be with me until your hearing but after Wednesday, there won't have to be anymore sneaking around." I'm listening to him, I really am, but I can't stop crying and Jo's trying to comfort me but she can't. I'm so happy right now, nobody understands. She's still not with me and that hurts me to my core but I can go to sleep tonight knowing that my daughter is being fed, bathed and protected. I can rest easy knowing that my daughter is with someone she knows and loves. "CPS got her results from her doctor yesterday, they said." He puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes it. I snivel and start wiping my eyes. This is the best news… "They told me that everything came back negative. They took her to an abuse psychologist and the psychologist concluded that based off her descriptions and lack of knowledge, she wasn't touched or beaten. I was able to catch a glimpse of the psychologists' notes in her file and they said that basically, she was never abused. Something about how she's ignorant on what touching and rubbing of her private area actually is, something about not being able to provide examples of instances where she was being touched and something about sticking to the fact that she fell off the coffee table even when interrogated…everything came back fine. Concluded that she was never abused or touched. And they took her to get checked out by a doctor and the doctor found nothing. No old broken bones that indicate abuse, no malnourishment, no scratches on her privates, no signs of penetration…she's healthy and she's with me."

I keep wiping the tears off my face. I sniff real hard. "So they're working towards closing the case?" I ask, still wanting to cry some more but not allowing myself to do so. "They're gonna close it and leave us alone?"

"They're working on it. But you still have to go to court and they might want you to take a polygraph exam. But yeah…they're working on closing it up." He pats my back hard, fatherly. "And once they close it up, she can come back home. But until then, she's gonna be with me." I rub my eyes hard when he says that. "And on Wednesday, I think they're going to clear you for supervised visits with her. They were waiting for her doctors' results to come back to grant you visits. They came back today but it's the weekend and they have to process the paperwork. So I'd say by Wednesday, they're gonna tell you that you're allowed to come over and visit her. Since her results came back negative, they're not going to make you go to a center. I can supervise the visits. Basically, they just don't want you to be alone with her. So you can come over and see her but I'm not allowed to bring her over here and she's not allowed to be with you unsupervised. But you gotta give that until Wednesday at the very least."

I'm gonna be able to see her on Wednesday? I feel like this huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I feel lighter again, like I can breathe. Lyla's out of foster care, she's with my dad, all her test results came back negative and they're going to give me supervised visits with her. I feel so much better. Still not 100% great, but better. See, I knew my Pop wouldn't do anything like that to me. It was strange that he was staying away from me the way he was, but I knew there was an explanation. I knew my dad wouldn't stab me in the back. He's always looking out for me. After days of pure hell, I finally have a reason to feel some sense of relief. Jo wraps her arms around me and gives me a hard hug and when she hugs me, I can't help it anymore. I put my face in her neck and let another round of happy tears out. As usual, she starts rubbing my head while she comforts me. "…I'm so sorry, Jimmy." While she comforts me, she apologizes to my dad. "Really, I am…and I understand if you're not able to put this aside but I just wanted you to know that I'm sorry. I didn't mean to blow up and I should've heard you out before I started accusing you of things. It's just—"

"I know how it looked." He interrupts her. "I know it looked bad…believe me, I know. And I was worried the entire time about how badly it looked. You don't have to apologize to me for that Jo."

"It's just that…I'm…I guess I'm just kind of…protective of him." She keeps rubbing my head. "I guess I just didn't like the idea of someone screwing with him. I'm sorry." Once I get a handle on myself and my emotions, I pick my head up from Jo's shoulder and rub my eyes again. "…You good now?" She asks me, wiping my eyes with her own hands. I nod my head at her. "I told you everything was gonna be okay, didn't I?" She smiles at me and puts her hands on my cheeks. "Didn't I?" I nod my head once again and close my eyes to try and get them to stop aching from crying so much. But as soon as I close them, she starts frantically patting me on the shoulder. "Alex…" I open my eyes back up, a little bit annoyed that she felt the need to tap me like that. "Alex, look…look." She points behind me.

I turn around to face the alleyway behind my house, which was empty a moment ago but is now housing the little grey sports car that belongs to Michelle. The back gate to the fence is already being flung open. "DADDY! DADDY! DADDY!" My jaw just…drops. She's running through the yard with her arms outstretched and her hair flying all over the place. I think I'm dreaming. I rest my hand against my thigh and take a piece of my skin between my thumb and my index finger. I give myself a good, hard pinch and open my eyes, expecting that when I open them, my daughter is going to disappear into a puff of dream smoke. But when I open my eyes, she's still there. She's still running towards me, wearing a pair of baggy blue jeans and a light blue t-shirt with a light blue headband to match. "DADDY!" I really hope I'm not dreaming. If I'm dreaming, this is so cruel. I fall down to my knees and hold my arms out too and she doesn't stop running until she ends up in them. "DADDY!" She jumps up, wraps her arms around my neck and wraps her legs around my waist. The force of her body sends me tumbling backward so I catch myself and fall flat on my butt. "Hi daddy!" She starts rubbing the stubble on my face, looking at me with those green eyes that make me melt and it's not until I hear her say "hi daddy" that I realize that no, I'm not dreaming. She's actually in my arms. "Hiiii…Hiii…" She's looking at me like she's so amazed that it's actually me. She's waving at me with one hand, rubbing my face with the other and looking at me with sheer astonishment. She won't stop saying hi to me either. "Hi daddy…Hi. Hi daddy…"

I feel like I'm going to pass out. My heart…it's not strong enough for this, I swear it's not. If I'm dreaming, please wake me up right now. If I'm dreaming, I don't want to have this dream because when I wake up, it's going to be pure hell once again, getting me up out of the bed. I can't have this dream. In my arms though, I hear a wail come out of her mouth that I've only ever heard once and that was when we showed up at Disney World. I can actually feel her tears on my neck…she's real. She's real and I snap out of thinking that this is all just a dream. "Don't cry, booger…" I shove my hands underneath her armpits and hold her up as I lie down flat in the grass. Her little face is all red and she has tears coming out of her eyes and streaming down her cheeks. "Don't cry." Who am I kidding? I want to cry too. I want to join her. I want to hold her so, so tight. I want to hold her so tight and never, ever, ever let her go again. Something inside of me won't let me cry in front of her though. "Look at the big booger…I missed you!" It's not until my cheeks hurt that I realize how hard I've been smiling. I lower her down and give her so many kisses that I lost count after 15. I wrap my arms around her little body and squeeze her. I inhale so I can smell her. She smells just like the pillows on her bed do. It's really, truly her. I have to squeeze my lips together because I'm half a second away from bursting out into tears. I missed everything about her. I missed her hair, her eyes, her cheeks, her little voice… "I missed you."

"Miss you too, daddy." She lays right on my chest and keeps her legs wrapped around me so that when I pick myself up off the ground, she's still firmly against my body and very secure. "I nebber go away. Okay? I sowwy. I be so good…" She's bawling her eyes out. "Daddy…"

I don't think today can get any better than this.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"JoeDoe…" As I'm standing at the stove stirring the spaghetti sauce to make sure it doesn't end up burning and sticking to the bottom of the pot, I'm interrupted by the feeling of tugging on the bottom of my shirt. "Hey JoeDoe." I don't bother to fight off the smile that's tugging at my lips. I gladly put the spoon down to give her my full, undivided attention. I didn't realize how much I myself missed her until I saw her getting out of that car in the alley earlier. I can tell she really missed being home because when she came through the doors, she just went right back to her normal self. It's almost as if she never left. She's standing next to me, wearing a frilly pink and black tutu over her blue jeans and a pair of oversized sunglasses. I'm guessing she's playing dress-up. "What you makin'?" She tilts her head all the way back to look up at me and I can't help but bust out in laughter. Imagine if you had a little four year old standing next to you, wearing a tutu over a pair of jeans and sunglasses that are way too big for her face; so big that she has to hold them up on her face. "Is that pasketti?" I wipe something pink off her cheek and nod my head. "Good. Cause I'm sick and tired to DEATH of not eating." She holds her sunglasses on her face with one hand, holds her tutu up with the other and starts walking away from me.

"Lala, come here." I turn completely around. She stops walking and turns around too. "Come here baby." I hold my arms out. Alex has had her so tied up with his own personal session of kisses and cuddles that I haven't properly got my chance with her. I totally understand why Alex would need all the time he could get but dammit, it's my turn. He's upstairs in the shower so finally she's free and it's my turn. I bend down and pick her right up. "Did you miss me too? Or just daddy?" I shift her onto my hip. To further crack me up more than she already has, she calls herself putting her sunglasses up on top of her head. "Cause I missed you." I give her a kiss on her cheek. "Jojo missed you a whole lot."

"Yeah, I miss my JoeDoe too. I miss ebbybuddy." She slings her arm around my neck and puts her head on my shoulder. "Guess what? Um…the girl at my um…at the house…her maked pasketti too and her had bown noodles. So yucky I could frow up." She tunes her little nose up. She's been here for a little more than an hour now and this is all she's been doing. All she's been doing is telling me and Alex about everything that went on in her foster home. So far, I've heard about how her foster mother made her watch what her brother wanted to watch on TV, how she had no dress up clothes, how she had to take a bath and go to bed after her bath, about how she wasn't allowed anything but water for a goodnight drink and about how nasty the food was. She's been trying to make it sound like the worst place in the world but both Alex and I have gathered from her stories that she was actually in a good home. They tried to get her to eat healthy, they gave her baths, they limited TV and encouraged her to play outside…they sound like decent people. "…Her not a good mama…not like you, JoeDoe."

"Aww, thank you baby." She just made my heart melt a little bit. She told me that I'm a good mom…I'm not even a mom but she thinks I'm a good one. She's so cute. "So I guess you're hungry, huh? If you didn't eat eat and your other house, you must be hungry. You wanna eat eat something good before you go back to Pappy's?" She nods her head. "Kay." This whole entire situation right now is so far illegal that Alex and I should without a doubt be in jail right now. Michelle brought her here, even though she's not supposed to have any contact with Alex and she and Jimmy both left her here. They're coming back to get her at 10:00 so she could sleep there but this entire thing is so wrong. I think they made a mistake by bringing Lyla here in the first place. They let her and Alex see each other and once they saw each other, it was over. There was no way that they were prying the two of them away from each other again so even if they were against leaving Lyla here for a couple hours, they would've had to. They're way too attached to each other.

I'm not surprised because I already knew how smart of a child that Lyla is, but she fully understands everything that we've told her. She understands that she still can't live here yet and she totally understands that nobody can know that she's here. She gets that this whole thing is a no-no. Alex explained to her that while she's here, she can't go outside because we can't risk people seeing her and Alex explained to her that while she's in here, she can't yell or scream because again, people can't know that she's here. She understands that she has to go back to Jimmy's to sleep but as long as she's good, Jimmy will bring her here every day to see her daddy. She gets it. "…Mumma, guess what?" I can tell that the "mumma" slipped. I can tell that it came out naturally so I won't correct her this time. "I have…" She's interrupted by a yawn. Alex and I have heard that she didn't eat or sleep much at her foster house so it makes sense that she's sleepy. "I have peenys on."

I gasp. "You do?! You have panties on!? Let me see!" I push her away from my hip just slightly and pull back both her tutu and her jeans so I can look. Sure enough, she has a pair of purple big girl undies on. That explains why her jeans are so baggy. They're usually pretty snug due to the fact that she usually has a big puffy pull-up on. "You're such a big girl! I'm so proud of you!" I hold my hand out so she can give me a high-five. "Alright, you little stinker! I can't believe you have big girl undies on!" I'm so proud of her. She's been wearing big girl panties the entire time she's been here and she hasn't even soiled them! We didn't even know she had them on! She's so big. "Did Pappy put them on you?" She nods her head. "You are such a big girl, I'm so proud of you! Oh, I need a kiss now. I'm so proud of you. I need a kiss." She smiles and giggles, proud of herself. She should be proud of herself. The fact that she doesn't need to walk around casually with a pull-up practically means that she's potty trained. She might need one to sleep in at night to prevent accidents but she doesn't need to walk around with one which means she can go to preschool diaper free! I pucker my lips and kiss her cheek. "Oooh I'm proud of you, Lala. I'm so proud of you."

"…Heeeey." All of a sudden, Alex is standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips. I can see the difference in him. He looks so much lighter and happier with her around and it's so apparent that he's doing a lot better. "Are you down here giving mommy all MY kisses?" The word "mommy" rolls off his tongue so naturally that it's almost as if he didn't think twice about it. So…is it okay if she calls me mommy now? Like really okay? He walks over to the both of us and starts tickling Lyla while she's still in my arms. "You don't give mommy all your kisses! You need to give me kisses! Your kisses are for daddy, okay?!" Lyla sprawls her body out so that her top half is leaning towards Alex while her legs are still around my waist.

"Daddy…" Lyla finally stops laughing and sits up straight, still on my hip. "Daddy, when them mean people stoppit…We can do what we want, wight? Like go to the um…the pawk?" She starts leaning away from me so I catch her drift and lower her down to the ground. "I wanna go to the pawk. I wanna swing and stuff…the house is no fun a lot."

"We can go to the park all you want when all of this is over, boogie. I promise." Alex takes the sunglasses off her head. "Until then…we can just make the house fun." He looks around, clearly feeling guilty about the fact that we can't take her outside to play or down to the beach because we can't risk people knowing that we have her. "…I could go for a game of hide and seek…how about you guys?"

Lyla starts smiling. "1…2…3, NOT IT!" She screams.

"NOT IT!" Alex screams next.

"Mumma, you it." Lyla taps me on my leg. "You it."

"…What the…" I turn the spaghetti sauce off. "That has to be the biggest load of you know what I've ever heard. What ever happened to 'bubble-gum, bubble-gum in a dish' or 'put your hand in the fishbowl?' What kind of crap is this '1,2,3 not it' thing?" I feel so cheated. They totally gipped me. I've never heard of this way of picking whose it. "Why do I gotta be it?"

"Don't protest. Just turn around and count to 20." Alex puts his hands on my shoulders and makes me turn around.

"…Y'all are some cheaters." I roll my eyes at both of them, turn around and reluctantly close my eyes. "1...2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10…11…12…13…14…15…16…17…18…19…20. Ready or not, here I come!" In addition to the bullshit way that they used to pick who was the seeker, they also gipped me with the counting thing. Back when I was little, we used to only count to ten. What is this counting to 20 shit? They're both full of shit when it comes to this. I turn back around and leave out of the kitchen. My gut instinct is telling me to start looking in the laundry room, so that's where I go first. I start by looking in the hamper for Lyla. There's nothing in the hamper besides two towels. I close the hamper and look in the cabinets. Neither one of them are in here so I leave out of the laundry room and head back towards the living room. I look behind the TV, nothing. Behind the couch, still nothing. I head over to the coat closet and open it up. "…Hi Alex." I tap his head. He was sitting down in the corner of the closet, all covered up with coats.

"Dammit. I swear this was actually a good hiding spot." He grunts as he picks himself up off the ground. He comes out of the closet (hehehehehe) and stretches his back out. "…I'm gonna give you a fair warning. Lyla is freakishly good at hide and seek, so good luck finding her." He starts following me around. "I told her to stay down here though. I told her that upstairs is off limits." I give him a thumbs-up and keep looking around the living room. She didn't stay in the kitchen because I would've heard her wherever she went. She's not in the laundry room because I checked that already. She's somewhere in this living room but I don't know where. I get on my hands and knees and check underneath the couches. I pick myself back up and go towards her pull-up bin in the corner. She's not over here either. "She's not in here." Alex slips me another hint. I sigh and head back towards the laundry room. I open up the closet in here and just as I suspected, there's nothing but towel racks in there. Unless…

I walk over to the dryer and open it up. "…Really, Lyla? Really? The dryer?" She starts cracking up, really getting a kick out of the fact that she had the best hiding spot. She fits in there quite comfortably and I get the feeling that getting in the dryer is something she's done before. I grab her little hands and help her out of it. "You know in some cultures, most people would turn the dryer on and watch you tumble around in there." I dust her off from all the fuzz in there. She's still giggling something serious. "Alright, daddy's it. I found him first."

"Daddy, go to the kitchen!" Lyla puts her hands on Alex's butt and pushes him towards the kitchen. "I winned and you losed so you it now. You gotta find me and mumma. Go." She keeps pushing him.

"Alright, alright." Alex starts going to the kitchen.

"No peeking either!" I yell at him. Once he's gone, I look at Lyla. She really doesn't need my help finding a hiding spot. Like Alex said, she's freakishly good at it. She bolts out of the laundry room and heads for the living room. I have no idea where I'm going to hide, but Lyla heads straight for the coat closet. She doesn't bother closing it behind herself, so I'm able to watch her as she uses a suitcase to hoist herself up and she climbs up and gets on the top shelf of the coat closet. If we let her hide upstairs, we'd never find her. She's scary good at hiding. I shake my head at her innovativeness and look around for my own hiding place. Well since Lyla didn't close the doors of the coat closet, I hide behind one of them. I've never been good at hide and seek.

"Ready or not…here I come." Alex mumbles from inside the kitchen and starts looking for us. "…This is so unfair. You guys are both all little and can squeeze into tiny places…" He starts complaining right off the bat. I watch as he goes into the laundry room. I hear him opening and closing the washer and dryer. "…There are only but so many places you'd fit though, Jo…" He's back in the living room. He looks behind the couches and behind the TV. I see him eye the coat closet and he comes over to it. "Lyla…" He mumbles her name and starts rummaging through the coats on the floor. "Where the hell are you two…" Dude, I'm right here behind the door. If you can't see me then you're even worse at hide and seek than I am and that's saying something. "I think I hear a Lyla in this closet…" He's still looking.

"…BOO!" I watch as Lyla pops off the top shelf and reveals herself. As if this is something they've done before, Alex catches her. She starts giggling again and I swear it's the sweetest thing I've ever heard. I know it's like five kinds of illegal, but I'm really glad that Jimmy brought her here. Alex needed this and as far as I can tell, Lyla did too. "We gotta find mumma…" Lyla wiggles out of Alex's hold and toddles around. "Her 'round here somewhere…"

As soon as she says that, Alex closes the doors to the closet and sees me. "…Wow Jo. You hid in such plain sight that I actually missed you."

I shrug my shoulders. "Looks like I won though." I feel all domestic and stuff. I mean, how much more of a family can the three of us be? Sitting here playing hide and seek together.

I don't think it gets much more family-oriented than this right here.


	51. Selfish

**A/N:** **M** rated content in this chapter.

* * *

I pick up my plate, my dad's plate, Jo's plate and take them all to the sink so I can rinse them before I stick them in the dishwasher. My dad was supposed to come over here at 9:30 to get Lyla so he could take her back to his house and have her in bed by at least 10:30 but he graciously gave me until 10:00. He _did_ show up at my doorstep at 9:30 and by that time, I had Lyla ready to go back to his house but instead of just packing her up and taking her back to his car like I suspected he would, he came in the house, kicked off his shoes, sat down and ate some dinner with us. "We're going to go look around at lawyers tomorrow, see who gives us the best price and stuff." I turn on the faucet and let the water rinse the sauce of the plates. "I just wish they would give me an actual date. I want to know when exactly we're gonna see a judge and stuff." I open up the dishwasher and stick the plates in empty slots on the rack. If I'm being honest here, I don't really like the fact that I'm able to discuss going to see lawyers and getting court dates in front of my four year old. I just think that there are some things that children shouldn't have to know about when they're certain ages and unfortunately for me, a piece of my own daughter's innocence has been stolen. I don't think she has any business knowing what CPS is, what placement is or anything of that nature. This is a conversation that I should have to send her into the next room for but sending her into the next room at this point would be pointless because she already knows everything that I'm saying. She knows that we have to go see a judge in order for her to be able to come home. She shouldn't know this, but she does and I think it's a shame that a four year old knows about this stuff.

I close the dishwasher and turn back around, putting my back against the counters. Lyla's sitting very contentedly on Jo's lap, shoving yet another forkful of spaghetti into her mouth. My dad let me read a little bit of the report he received from Lyla's foster parents and in the report, it stated that she didn't eat anything while she was in their care. It said that they basically kept her alive by feeding her PediaSure and PediaLyte. I admit that at first, I thought they were just being dramatic. I thought they were exaggerating when they said that she didn't eat anything but once she asked Jo to make her another plate, I started to believe it. She usually eats like a bird. She usually only eats about half a plate before she's full and ready to get down from the table. Right now, she's on her third helping of spaghetti and she had two pieces of buttered bread. The bread was Jo's idea. She claims that bread fills people up so she gave Lyla a piece of bread with butter on it with her second plate. I'm really glad my dad did this for me. At first, I was a little bit angry that he brought her over here because initially, I thought he was just letting me see her for one day and one day only. That would've pissed me off beyond belief because I can't handle crap like that. I can't handle things like being teased and if he would've brought Lyla over here just to take her away again, that would've been teasing me. He plans on letting me see her every day until the court hearing though, and that's why I'm not so pissed off that he did this for me. He told me that he'll start texting me off Michelle's phone to set up times for her to bring her here and pick her up and I appreciate that.

I will admit that I'm a little bit nervous that we're going to be caught though. Truthfully, I don't think we will but you never know. My dad seems to have this entire thing mapped out to prevent us from getting caught but again, you never know. He's going to drop her off and pick her up in the alley instead of going through the front door. He's going to text and call me off Michelle's phone and we're going to keep all calls less than one minute. And when Lyla's over here visiting me, he and Michelle are going to be out of his house too, that way if CPS shows up to do surprise check-ins, he can always say that they're all out of the house at the moment. He even made sure that Lyla understands the seriousness of her keeping her mouth shut about seeing me. I really don't think that we're going to get caught; especially if I only have to wait until Wednesday to be cleared for supervised visits, but the thought of all of this being illegal is a bit nerve-wracking. "Here, eat more bread." Jo folds the slice of buttered bread in half and holds it by Lyla's mouth. With a heap of spaghetti still in her mouth, Lyla leans forward, takes a bite of bread and leans back against Jo's chest as she chews. Jo puts the bread back down, strokes Lyla's hair back and kisses a clean spot on her otherwise sauce-covered cheek.

To make it easier on my dad, Jo and I got Lyla all ready for bed. We played rounds of hide and seek until Lyla got bored with it and once she got bored, she went underneath the stand that the TV in the living room sits on and dragged out Candy Land. She had me and Jo playing that until she won, which took about an hour. Jo and I were literally trying to let her win but with a game like Candy Land, it's kind of hard to do that. Jo would draw a card that told her to move two purple squares and when she'd only move one, Lyla would tell her that she missed one and she'd make her move two. As soon as she finally won, we put the game away and took her upstairs. I gave her a real good bath, stuck a Band-Aid on the "caterpillar" behind her ear and put her in a pair of fresh pajamas. I rationalized giving her a bath by saying that I was only doing it to make it easier on my dad but in reality, I really just missed giving my daughter a bath, washing her hair and putting her in a pair of pajamas. I miss tucking her into bed too but I guess I'll just have to settle for doing the bath routine with her since I won't be able to be there to tuck her in. I'm not greedy by any means so I'll take whatever time I get with her.

"You all done, booger?" Sighing when I realize that it's time for her to go, I go over to the table and stand next to her and Jo. My dad has been looking at Jo off and on for the entire time he's been here. It's not exactly obvious—I know for a fact that Jo hasn't noticed it. I've noticed though. He'll take a sip of his Pepsi, look at Jo, take another sip of Pepsi and go on about his business. He really seems to like Michelle so I don't particularly believe that he's been gawking at her because he finds her attractive; I think there's another reason behind it and I'd like to know that reason. "You finished?" I ask Lyla again, putting the thoughts of my dad staring at my girlfriend temporarily out of my mind. Lyla nods her head and yawns real big. She turns her head so that her cheek is resting between Jo's boobs and in an effort to make her more comfortable, Jo sits all the way back in her chair and cradles Lyla in her arms like she's four months old instead of four years old. "Do you care if she puts her to sleep?" I pick up Lyla's plate and turn around to ask my dad.

"No, go 'head. All I'll have to do is stick her in the bed when we get back home." My dad waves his hand, finishes off the final sip of his glass of Pepsi and hands me the empty cup. As soon as he gives her permission, Jo rests her chin against the top of Lyla's head and starts gently swaying back and forth with her, a notion that comes so naturally to her that it's almost hard to believe that she's never had any children herself. "Thank you for dinner there, Jo. It really hit the spot." He says to her. I shut the door to the dishwasher again and as soon as I look back up, I notice that my dad is smiling…at Jo. My eyebrow involuntarily raises up at my sudden realization. I'm getting really tired of giving my dad the benefit of the doubt lately. All I've been doing recently is giving him the benefit of the doubt and here I am, doing it again. There has to be a perfectly logical explanation for my dad to be smiling at my girl, right? "Are you basically…living here now?" He asks.

Promptly, Jo starts shaking her head. "No sir." She answers politely and very respectfully, a total contradiction of the kind of tone she took with him earlier when she was accusing him of being in on the whole scheme to have Lyla taken away. I'm guessing she's only being this respectful because she still feels bad about how she accused him earlier. She expressed her guilt to me a little earlier and I told her that she shouldn't worry about it. "I still have my house down the street." I watch as she starts lightly bouncing her leg up and down and patting her hand against Lyla's butt. She has sauce all over the front of her shirt from the sauce on Lyla's cheeks but it doesn't seem like she really cares about that. Lyla's eyes are closed, her cheek is smashed against Jo's chest, one of her arms is neatly tucked against Jo's stomach and her other arm is bent, allowing her hand to be resting against her cheek. Her two little lips are parted so her mouth is slightly open and her eyes are closed. She's out cold. "…I do have a drawer here though." She looks back up at my dad with a soft smirk, which lets me know that she's making fun of me for inventing the drawer. "It's not much, but it's a drawer…and a toothbrush."

"Sounds promising." My dad pushes out from his chair and stands up. Jo takes her eyes off of him and puts them back down at Lyla while she sleeps soundly on her chest. She's looking at Lyla so she doesn't notice that my dad's eyes are once again, looking at her. I silently observe as his eyes start at Jo's face and work their way down her entire body. Another gentle half-smile comes across his face and as a mere reaction, my fist clenches.

"Dad…" I clear my throat, not because I have anything stuck in it but because I'm trying to disguise the fact that I'm starting to get pissed off. "Can I talk to you real quick? I'll…walk you to the laundry room so you can get your shoes." I motion with my hand for him to come with me and start walking out of the kitchen. He starts walking to join me but his progress is significantly slowed because he's too busy looking at my girlfriend to walk. "Now?" I accidentally snap at him but it works. He takes his eyes away from her and finally follows me. After he shuffles into the laundry room with me, I close the door just in case I begin to yell and whip around to face him. "What the hell is that all about?" I'm having a hard time maintaining a low tone but I'm really trying. "You've been staring at her like she's a piece of meat for half an hour now. What the hell is up?" He starts talking but I hold my hand up, signaling that I'm not finished. "I don't know what the hell it's all about but don't ruin this for me, dad. I really like her…"

"I can tell." He leans against the dryer and gives me one of his "father knows best" grins. "I gotta admit Al, I didn't really know what you saw in her until today." I wrinkle my eyebrows. He better not be insulting her. "She's pretty, sure…and she's really nice but I thought that was pretty much it. She didn't really stand out to me much and I couldn't figure out why you were so crazy about her but I think I finally figured it out and I finally understand it. I didn't realize I was staring…my fault." He explains. "You love her though, don't you?"

"…Yeah." I put my hands on my hips, nod my head and for the first time, I admit it to someone besides myself. "I see a future with her, I'm crazy about her, I think she's amazing. …Yeah, I love her."

"I can tell, just by the way you look at her. You ever tell her that you love her?" He lifts his head up slightly, challenging me. I pause for a second, trying to decide if I should tell him or not but eventually, I nod the answer to that too. "She tell you?" I don't say or do anything to that question. I don't know how Jo would feel about me telling my dad that we've said our "I love yous" and I don't want her to be mad so I just won't say anything. "…Well she doesn't need to tell you." He makes a move towards his shoes. "You should be able to tell just by the way she acts. I can tell and I've only been observing for half an hour like you said." I remain quiet and just listen to his observations. "I thought she was going to rip my face off today, all because she thought I was hurting you. She touches you like she doesn't want to break you, she looks at you like you're the greatest thing since sliced bread and she always comes running to you. She let you cry on her earlier, for god's sake Alex. Does she really have to tell you that she loves you? And with Bella…" He just shakes his head. "You'd think Bella's her own kid with the way she acts towards her."

"…And you were looking at her because you finally realized what a great girl I have, is that right?" I tilt my head to the side. I know where this conversation is going because my dad and I have had this conversation a million times before, only expect for Jo being the topic of discussion, it was Jenna. He's about to start preaching to me about the importance of treating Jo right because losing her would be a travesty. He's about to go off on a rant about how I always mess things up for myself because I start to settle once I'm into a relationship, blah, blah, blah. I have half a mind to just pretend like I'm listening to him while he goes on his little rant and talks just to hear himself talk, but the bigger half of my mind doesn't feel like listening to him. "Dad, we don't have to have this conversation." I stop this argument before it even starts. "We don't have to have this conversation again…okay? I learned my lesson with Jenna, I know what not to do." He looks very skeptical. "…Dad, I'm not gonna mess this up with Jo. I'm not going to. I learned what not to do, I learned my lesson and I can't. I _can't_ mess this up with her. I love her too much to mess things up. She's good…probably even better than Jenna. I'm not gonna mess things up with her. It's not an option. I'm too determined to keep her."

With a moment of silence between us, he traces his eyes across my body, as if he's sizing me up or something. He gives me the same grin he was giving Jo back in the kitchen. "…I was going to say…that I was looking at her because I think you found your soulmate. I think you found that one person you're just meant to be with. You remember before Jen died? And she made you swear to her that you wouldn't spend the rest of your life alone? She made you swear that you'd find someone for you and for Bella too. And you remember how you told me that you didn't think you'd be able to?" I put my arms down at my sides, look down at the floor and nod. "Well you did it." He pats my shoulder once again. "You really did it with Jo." He stomps into his boots and stands up straight. "And yeah…don't ruin it for yourself."

"I won't Pop. I really won't."

 **X X X**

"So, did your dad say what time he's bringing her back tomorrow?" Jo asks as she stuffs the Candy Land game back underneath the TV in its respectful place. I'm busy myself with cleaning up the coat closet that we messed up with hide and seek. Just as I thought I would, I'm having post-Lyla depression. My dad took her back to his house about twenty minutes ago and I already miss her. After our talk in the laundry room, he went into the kitchen and grabbed her off of Jo but just before he could leave out of the door, I, of course, had to give her a thousand goodbye kisses, even though she was asleep. I just miss her already but it's comforting to know that I'll get to see her again tomorrow. I still don't think that this is the way things should be. I shouldn't have to bargain time with my baby girl; she should just be here 24/7 but like I said earlier, I'm not greedy. I'll take whatever time I can get with her. Jo comes over to where I'm standing and starts helping me clean up the closet. "Or is he just going to text you and let you know when he can let you keep her?" She looks like she's had a long day and I guess it's understandable, considering the fact that we both did have a long day, but she looks worse than I do. She has spaghetti sauce all over the front of her lavender tank top from letting Lyla's spaghetti face lay on her chest. Her pajama pants have fallen a little bit below her waist; something that can be fixed if all she does is tighten the drawstrings. Her hair was up in a bun way earlier but since then, it's fallen to the middle of her back and been made into somewhat of a ponytail since she hasn't bothered to redo the bun. Is it weird that even though she looks rough, I think she looks sexy?

"He said he'll drop her off around 6:00 tomorrow and come back for her around 11:00. He and Michelle are gonna go up to Pensacola and grab something to eat while she's gone, he said." The both of us finish cleaning up the closet in no time and I shut the door. "He's gonna try and stay out of the house for as long as she's over here with us…just in case someone pops up at his door for some kind of surprise visit, he can say that they all went somewhere if they're all out of the house at the same time." I pluck a piece of lint out of her hair and she watches it flutter to the ground once I fling it. "It's going on 11:30. We should probably head to bed now too. It's late and we have a long day tomorrow…looking at lawyers and stuff."

"Yeah." Sighing, she turns around and starts walking towards the kitchen. "I'm gonna head home for the night." She rounds the corner into the kitchen and heads for the pair of flip flop sandals she wore over here yesterday. "I'll see you tomorrow." Still facing me, she blindly reaches back and puts her hand on my doorknob. She told me earlier that she was going to go home tonight because she has to work tomorrow and earlier, I was fine with it. I'm not so fine with it anymore; the more I stand here and look at her. I don't know what's pulling me in more, the fact that her tank top is rising up a bit, just enough for the bottom of her navel to peek through or the fact that half her ponytail is resting over her shoulder while the other half is down her back. Both of those things are such small, minuscule things but it's the small things about Jo that absolutely take my breath away. "Baby?" She calls my name, which draws my eyes away from her waist and pulls my thoughts away from amazement. She said my name as if she's been saying it for quite some time now and honestly, she probably was. I was too caught up in staring at her to realize that she was calling me. "Can I have a goodnight kiss?"

I stare at her lips before I give her an answer. Her lips are one of my most favorite parts of her entire body; right next to her legs and of course, what's between her legs. I'm a sucker for her lips. She has big, full, plump lips that make me lose my mind when I look at them. And they're always, always soft. She has the most kissable lips ever. "How 'bout I just stay the night at your house?" I suggest. She looks at me as if I've just said the stupidest thing she's ever heard. "Why not? You're always down here. I can stay at your house some nights, can't I?"

"I'm just trying to figure out why you'd want to stay the night in my shitty house and sleep in my shitty bed when you have a mansion compared to mine and a perfectly good bed upstairs." She shakes her head at me and back pedals to the door. "You don't want to stay over my house, Alex. I don't even want to stay there half the time."

"I want to be anywhere you are, Jo." I retort. I bet her house isn't that bad. I've been in there once and it didn't look that bad. Trust me, if her house was as bad as she's trying to make it seem, I wouldn't let her live there. I'd make her give it up and let her live here in a heartbeat. Her house isn't as bad as she thinks it is. She looks down at the floor and ultimately shrugs her shoulders. "…Lemme go grab some pajamas and I'll be down."

"Alright, hurry up…I'll wait." She doesn't sound too enthusiastic about me coming down her house but at least she agreed, I guess.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

(Really **explicit** language here, guys.)

If I had known that Alex was going to ask me to stay the night at my house, I would've cleaned it up first. I kind of left it a wreck yesterday when he called me and asked me to come down. I left it with dishes in the sink, clothes strung all over my room and hair all in my shower drain. I hope he doesn't think that this is the way I usually live because I swear, it's not. I'm actually a pretty clean person and although my house is crappy, I don't make it a point to live in a pigsty. I hope he knows that. "So maybe if you leave some of your clothes at my house, I can start a drawer for you too." I swat my hand at a firefly as we continue to walk down the street to my house. I really don't know why he'd want to stay the night over my house but if he insists… But leaving his house to stay at mine is like leaving a Hilton Hotel to go stay in a cheap Days Inn Motel. I don't see his logic here. "Not sure how you'd use it when you hardly ever stay at my house but still…you can have a drawer, and a toothbrush and your own special soap here."

"Don't you have an air mattress?" He completely bypasses the conversation about the drawer and the toothbrush and asks me about something totally random. I walk ahead of him by a few steps because I'm going to have to unlock the door once we get up to my front door. Busy with trying to find the right key that goes to my front door, I just nod my head to answer him. He says not another word. I jog up the front steps to my house, swing open my old wooden screen door and start messing around with my keys to shove the right one into the lock. While I'm trying to unlock the door, Alex startles me by suddenly wrapping his hands around my waist. I jump a little bit but regain control of myself and continue with trying to find the right key. "Air mattresses don't make a lot of noise…" He steps closer to me, rests chin on my shoulder and tilts his head slightly to the side so that his lips are against my neck. "They're actually pretty quiet." Feeling his breath against my neck gives me goosebumps and knowing what he's implying makes me smile. "I don't think I quite showed you all my moves last night." He presses his lips to my neck and slides his hands up underneath my shirt, his thumbs meeting one another at my navel.

Feeling a little drunk on his words and high on his neck kisses, I forcibly shove the key through the lock, turn it and push open my front door. I take a step towards actually getting into the house, but Alex tightens his hands around my waist and pulls me toward him so that my butt is against his groin and he opens his mouth against my neck. My eyelids flutter shut and my breath catches in my throat, but I somehow find the strength to open my eyes again while his tongue trails from the tip of my earlobe, all the way down to my collarbone. I have to mash my lips together to bear with what he's doing to me and when I do that, I find it within myself to pull away from him. I grab onto his hand and pull him through the door. He grabs my keys out of the lock and eagerly slams the door behind the both of us. I let go of his hand and start walking towards my bedroom, completely ignoring the mess in my kitchen. As soon as I take two steps towards my room, he grabs my hand again and yanks me toward him. "Alex!" I call his name with a slight giggle in my voice. His yank on my hand forces me to spin around and face him.

I hear him drop my keys onto the floor as he grabs onto my waist again and forces my body against his. Through the darkness of my kitchen, our faces somehow find each other and our lips meet. We tilt our heads to opposite sides and when our tongues meet, I can feel the intensity and how badly he wants this—wants me. His bottom lip slides against mine and his tongue massages mine as he takes control of the kiss. I wrap my arms around his neck and hold his face to mine, never wanting to break this kiss. As we kiss though, his hands are all over my hips and he's walking forward, forcing me to walk backwards. Never once breaking our kiss, he kicks off his slippers and I kick off my sandals. He pulls away from my mouth, allowing both of us a moment to breathe but instead of staying apart, he instantly puts his mouth on my neck and stuffs his hands up my shirt. Stumbling backwards, I eventually feel my way to my counter and steady my balance using it. I slip my hands up his t-shirt too, tracing my fingertips along his abs but maintaining that "one step ahead of you" mentality, he pulls away from me just long enough to pull my tank top over my head. My shirt falls to my kitchen floor without a sound and instead of kissing my neck some more, he bends his knees a little and starts kissing the skin on my boobs that's exposed on the outside of my bra. He curls his hands around to my back and starts messing with the buckle on my bra. Once he unsnaps the buckle, the weight of my boobs weighs my bra down and my boobs inevitably spill out. He aggressively throws my bra to the floor right along with my shirt and uses his hands to push my boobs together.

He sticks his tongue out and while his hands are pushing my boobs together, he glides his tongue across both my nipples. I bite my bottom lip, tilt my head backwards a little bit and slowly reach back to take my hair out of the sloppy half-ponytail-half-bun it was in. When I take my hair out, it falls to my chest, which makes Alex push it out of his way so he can continue licking at my chest. I toss my head backwards and jerk it to the side to keep my locks out of his way. I rest my hand against the back of his head and look down, watching the shadow of the fluffy hair on his head gyrate back and forth as he swirls his tongue around both my boobs; giving each one equal attention. I can definitely tell that he's feeling better than he's been feeling for the last few days because when we had sex earlier, he was slow and it seemed like he was only halfheartedly doing things. He seems all into it right now. I guess that's because he has a whole lot to celebrate as of recently. He stops smushing my boobs together. Instead, his hands return back to my waist and he starts bending his knees more and more as he uses his tongue to trace a straight line from my boobs to my waist. He stops at my navel for a moment, tracing his tongue around the circle but he continues on his way. He stops at the rim of my pajama pants and starts kissing, with tongue, the skin on my lower stomach. My knees go weak for a second but by grabbing on the rim of my counter, I'm able to steady myself again. He skillfully unties the drawstrings on my pants and gives them one slight pull. All I have to do is widen my legs a little to make them fall down to my ankles. They were already too big for me to begin with. He moves his head down a little until he's finally at my middle and through my underwear, he gives me a few sloppy kisses.

One by one, I slowly lift my feet out of my pants so that they're all the way off. When I lift my foot up the second time to take my pants off, he doesn't let me put it back down. Instead, he shoves his hand up underneath my thigh and holds my leg up. I have to hold onto my counter again to keep my balance. He turns his head to the side, pushes my leg up higher and starts gnawing on my clit through my underwear. I lick my lips, biting my tongue on its way back into my mouth and just look down at what I can make out of his head. My jaw is quivering as I'm fighting the urge to start moaning. I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth as he takes the hand that's not holding my leg up away from my hip. He pulls away from eating me out through my underwear for a second, long enough to stick his middle finger into his mouth but he goes right back to it after that. He grabs the base of my underwear, pulls it to the side and eases his middle finger inside of me. I gasp and try to move away from him but once I remember that I'm standing against a counter, the only way for me to go is up and I end up bouncing on my tiptoe. Instead of moving his finger in and out, he wiggles it in more of a "come here" kind of motion while it's inside of me and I have to really grit my teeth together to keep myself from moaning. Oh my god, it feels so good though. My toes curl under and I stare up at my ceiling, trying to steady my breathing. He cups his lips around my clit now and gives it one long, hard suck. "Uh…" I accidentally let a soft moan slip through my lips. I squeeze the corner of the counter and start gasping. I keep trying to back away from him but I can't. It feels way, way too good for me to just sit here and take it. How does anyone take this?

Finally, he takes his finger out, gives me one last kiss and starts kissing his way up my body again. Not that I didn't like what he was doing to me because I freaking _loved_ it, but I'm so glad he stopped. I couldn't take that anymore. He's way too good with his mouth for his own good. He starts kissing my neck again. "You really don't like to moan, do you?" He asks me between kisses. His horny voice is so freaking sexy. I can't open my mouth though. I can't even think, let alone talk, so I just shake my head. "I'll make you." He mumbles directly in my ear and starts sucking on my earlobe. I start pulling at his shirt, silently telling him that I want it off. He catches my drift, pulls away from me and takes his shirt off. I lean forward and kiss his chest. He puts his hands underneath my butt and picks me up so I just wrap my legs around his waist. He's still kissing my neck, so I just tangle my fingers through his hair. Just when I think he's going to take me back to my bedroom, he does a complete 360 and deposits me on my little round, wooden kitchen table. There's a part of me that's glad that he didn't make the journey back to my bedroom because I don't think I would've made it. I need him right now. Taking me through the living room, opening the door to my bedroom…it just would've killed the mood.

Without a care in the world, he pushes the stack of envelopes off my table and onto the floor to make room. Once the table is clear, he lays me down flat on top of it and again, starts kissing from my neck all the way down my body. I'm not very tall so of course, my legs hang off the end of the table and dangle but when he makes it down to my waist again, he uses my shortness to his advantage and easily takes my underwear off. He steps back away from the table for a second and from what I can see, it looks like he's taking off his own pants. Once they're off, he comes back over to the table and grabs my legs with his hands. He wraps his hands around my ankles, parts my legs and puts them comfortably on his shoulders. I won't lie; this makes me kind of nervous but only because I've never really done anything like this before and I don't know if this is going to hurt or not. I trust Alex though, which is something that makes having sex with him a lot easier. I trust that he won't do anything to hurt me. So with my legs on his shoulders, he holds himself with his hand and guides the tip of himself inside of me. I grit my teeth together and close my eyes. My god, he's so hard and after taking him earlier today, you would think that I'd be used to how big he is but I'm not. I would be okay if he wasn't so thick. He's trying to kill me with this thing. Once the tip is in, he takes my legs off his shoulders, closes them, holds them with both his arms and starts easing the rest inside me. Just like earlier, the initial entrance hurts a little bit. I'm just a little bit sore but I know that once he actually starts thrusting, I'll be alright.

He turns his head to the side a little and kisses my foot. He tightens his grip around my legs, draws back and makes the first thrust into me. Ouch. He braces my legs against his chest, adjusts his stance so that he's more comfortable and after that first thrust, he starts going crazy. After that first thrust, I'm not so sore anymore and it's starting to feel so goddamn good. I throw my hands back, over my head and grab onto the edge of the table while he's pumping so hard and fast that the table is moving each time he goes in. It's moving and squeaking and I'm guessing that I'm not helping with how hard I'm squeezing the side of it. "Oh my god." I whisper to myself. I need something better to grab onto. This table isn't cutting it anymore. If I don't find something to grab onto or bite down onto while he's doing this to me so good, I'm going to… "Ooooh! Mmmm….Mmmmy god…" He's still kissing my foot but my toes are curling under. "Ohhh shit… Shit…shit…" I can't even catch my breath. Why am I actually moaning? I don't moan during sex. I don't moan, I don't cuss, I don't do anything but breathe sometimes I'll gasp. Why does he bring it out of me? He grabs my ankles again but this time, he spreads my legs open. He puts his hands on the backs of my thighs, right underneath my buttcheeks and pushes my legs down. I don't bend this way…I do NOT bend this way.

Apparently I do, because he holds my legs down long enough for him to put it all the way inside of me to the point where only his balls are left hanging out and well, I didn't think that I bent that way but I guess I do. He puts the palms of his hands flat against the table while he's on top of me and starts moving only his bottom half in and out. It only feels natural for me to do this, so I end up putting my legs back on his shoulders. The folds where my knees bend are on his shoulders and my legs are literally bent over his shoulders. He starts pumping in and out so hard that my butt actually lifts up off the table and I honestly can't believe I thought that he was going to hurt me. He's doing the opposite of hurting me. "Oh my god! Mmmmmm, fuck!" I'm being so loud but I can't even help it. I just can't help it. It feels way too good for me to help it. "Fuck…fuck! Oh my god…oh my god…" I can feel the sweat dripping from my temple and I can't catch my breath. "Oooohh… uhhh! Uhhh!" I let go of the table and grab onto his arms. I squeeze onto his arms so hard that my own palms go numb. My eyes roll to the back of my head and I literally feel like I'm drifting into heaven. There's no way in hell ANYTHING should feel this good. He starts slowing down though. "No, no…" I loosen up on his arms. "Don't stop baby, don't stop…" I need to control what the hell is coming out of my mouth but I really can't. It's like the second he put himself inside of me, he took away all ability I have to control myself.

He lowers his face down to mine, kisses my cheek and much to my annoyance, he stops thrusting altogether. He even takes it out and when he does, I sit up to find out what the hell is up. He better not be done. I didn't even orgasm yet. If he's done, I swear to god… He kisses me on my cheek again, wraps his arms around my waist and scoots me off the table. It's not until I try to stand on my own two feet that I realize I can't. My legs are so weak right now. But thankfully, he holds me up and he's being quite aggressive with me. I have to admit that I like when guys are aggressive. He kisses me deeply on my lips before forcing me to turn around. I stand up, with my weight supported against his body. My butt is against his groin again and I turn my head around so we can kiss again. He shoves his tongue in my mouth, slides his hands down my body and starts rubbing my clit. I can't help but moan through the kiss and as soon as I break the kiss by moaning, he stops rubbing me and pushes me to lie down so that I'm bent over the table. Without even the slightest warning, he shoves it back inside of me and holds onto my hips. This time, he starts thrusting so hard that I can actually hear it. It sounds like two hands clapping together but I know for a fact that it's not two hands clapping. I resort back to holding onto the edge of the table. My lips are tightly pressed together, my eyes are closed and my hair is flying all over the place. I feel his hands squeeze my butt for a moment. I put my head down so that my forehead is resting against the table and open my mouth to let out a harsh breath. I'm trying SO hard not to moan.

He puts both his hands back on my waist again and as he thrusts his hips forward, he pulls me back so that he's as deep as he possibly can get and that's the one thing that makes it too hard for me to keep quiet. "AHHHH!" I clamp my lips together after screaming like that and run my hand through my now sweaty hair. I grind my teeth together to contain myself but Alex isn't stupid and he has some sort of mission to ensure that I make a damn fool out of myself. Once he notices that going deep like that is the one thing that drove me crazy, he keeps doing it with each and every thrust. I clench my teeth together and start mumbling under my breath. "Yes, yes…Oh my god, yes…yes…" He notices me gripping the edge of the table and leans forward to pry my fingers off it. When he gets me to stop squeezing the table, he folds my arms at the elbows and holds them behind my back, using them to brace himself so he can continue thrusting deep like that. "Mmm! Mmm!" I end up whimpering instead of moaning and that's because I really can't take this anymore. I'm not too far away from orgasming and I can't take this anymore. He keeps one hand on my arms and the other hand ends up becoming tangled in the lengths of my hair. For the first time all night, I hear him grunt and mumble "fuck" under his breath. I don't know what kind of turbo boost he got from that grunt but after he does it, he starts going so crazily fast and hard that the table is inching away from us but he's just following it. "Oh my god, ALEX!" I scream his name so loud that my throat burns. "ALEX! A…ALEX!" He's keeping up with the table as it moves and it seems like he's really trying to kill me. I can't take this anymore. I end up bouncing on my tiptoes again, trying to get away from him. He has to stop it. I can't take this anymore. It feels too fucking good…it feels too good. I can't take this.

"Nope." He murmurs, pulling my hair a little harder. I don't usually like having my hair pulled but for some reason, it's not bothering me that he's doing it. "No running…" He's all out of breath but he's managing to talk to me. "Just take it." He mumbles and puts the hand that's not in my hair against my waist to hold me still. I'm starting to get hotter by the second so I know that I'm pretty close. That tingly feeling is brewing in the pit of my stomach and spiraling its way down to my vagina and I know that I'm so incredibly close. Alex lets my hair go and puts both his hands on my hips again. I think somehow he can tell that I'm close because again, he turns the pace up and starts using longer, deeper, stronger strokes. It's like he's trying to make sure I can feel each and every inch of his length.

"Oh my god…" My leg starts to shake. "Oh my god, daddy…" As soon as I say it, my jaw drops. I can't believe I just said that…I canNOT believe I just said that. I can't believe…did I just…I just… I close my eyes, cringing at myself. I purse my lips together, determined to keep my mouth SHUT. I just go right back to squeezing the table and with about three more thrusts from him, I'm there. My whole entire body is just hot and sweaty, my every nerve is alive, my spine is tingling and I really feel like screaming but the only indication I give to him that I just got mine is the fact that I just go limp. Shortly after my body falls weak, I feel him hot and runny inside of me, filling me up. I can't help but smirk at that feeling; just knowing that we both just enjoyed each other like that. I can't catch my breath, though. I'm breathing so hard, laying here against this table and trying to recover from the thing I just said less than a minute ago. That was without a doubt the craziest sex I've ever had and without a question the best orgasm I've ever had too. Ever. I've been having sex since I was eighteen years old and nobody's ever made me scream, whimper, moan or orgasm like that. But I still can't believe I just said what I said. What I called him…oh my goodness, I'm so cringe-worthy.

He pulls himself out of me and starts caressing my body. His fingertips are tracing along my spine and his lips are kissing my shoulder blade as he's bent over my already bent over body. "You alright?" He pulls my hair away from my ear and kisses my earlobe. I nod my head, still trying to recover from the amazing orgasm plus the embarrassment. "I love you." I close my eyes and feel my heartbeat returning back to normal. "You ready for bed?" I lick my lips and nod my head again. "Shower and then bed?" I nod again. "Why won't you talk to me?" He continues stroking my hair. I close my eyes and sigh. "Tired?" I nod. "Alright, let's go to bed then." He gives me one more kiss on my earlobe and gets off of me. I peel myself up off the table, stumbling when I find that A, my legs are weak from cumming as hard as I did and B, my body is a little bit sore. I steady myself on the table, gather myself and bend down to pick up my clothes. "Jo, I'm serious. Are you alright?" It's kind of weird how he can go from being all dirty and seductive to all loving and careful the next. I find it kind of sexy. I don't say anything but I guess the way I'm walking is saying enough because he grabs my arm. "…I forgot. You gotta let me know when I hurt you. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize." I shake my head. "…Alex, there's nothing you can do that won't hurt me." I pull myself together and walk through my living room and back to my bedroom with him following me. "It's sad but it's the truth. We could've gone missionary all night long and it still would've hurt. Sex and a broken pelvis…" I grit my teeth together, bearing with the pain as I push my door open and turn on the light. "Sex and a broken pelvis don't mix very well. But seriously, I'm fine. There's nothing that you could've done that wouldn't have hurt. I could've been on top or whatever and it still would've hurt." I put my clothes in the dirty clothes basket. "Doesn't hurt while we're doing it, hurts after. But I'm fine. Seriously, I'm fine. Don't worry about me, alright?" I grab my bath towel. "Besides…it's not the pelvis that's bothering me right now…"

"Then what's bothering you?" He steps back into his boxers and sits down on my bed. "Let me know, Jo. I'll fix it…"

"You can't fix it." I wrap my towel around my body. "I'll leave the shower water running so you can hop in after me."

"I wanna know what's bothering you, Jo." He reaches out and grabs my arm. "Tell me."

"I can't." I'm feeling the wave of embarrassment come over me again.

"Yes you can. You can tell me anything. Anything in this world, you can tell me." He holds my hand and stands up. "Tell me." He puts his hand underneath my chin. "…What is it?"

I bite my lip, take a deep breath and just throw a Hail Mary. "…That was a one-time thing. I don't usually say that. I don't make it a point to…call my boyfriends that. I just don't want you to think I do that all the time. It's just…anything was coming out and I know it's weird. I'm so sorry. It'll never happen again."

"What the hell are you talking about?" He narrows his eyes.

"…You didn't hear what I said? What I called you?" I lower my tone.

"What, you calling me 'daddy'? That's what this is all about?" I look down at the floor and slowly nod. "…Not the first time that's happened." He shrugs his shoulders and my head snaps up. "What? It's not. Happened to me twice already, you're the third, no offense." I squint at him. "…What? I like it. It lets me know that I'm doing it right. I like it…it's hot."

"So it's…not a big deal?" I tilt my head.

"No. Totally not a big deal." He shakes his head. "You sure that's all that was bothering you?"

"…Yeah."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I roll over and stretch my arm out so that I can wrap it around her and pull her closer to me. But when I reach over, my arm is met with nothing but cold sheets. My eyes snap open, instantly blinded by the sunlight peeking through the curtains and I look around. I thought two nights ago was the best sleep I've ever had but I was wrong. Last night was certainly the best sleep I've ever had. Her little air mattress bed is actually pretty comfortable for one and for two, it's always nice to fall asleep after getting laid. The sex last night was hot, dirty, sweaty…the bomb. It was great. Downright great, nothing else to say, no other way to put it. Jo's the best lay I've ever had in my life. Everything about her in bed is just…wow. She's a great lay. But what's even better than having amazing sex is basking in the incredible morning after, so I sit up in the bed and look around her room. She's nowhere to be found. She's not in the bed next to me, she's not in the room. She should still be asleep. I don't have access to a watch or a clock right now but I know for a fact that it's no later than 7:00 in the morning. I can tell that by the way the sunlight is coming into the room. I rub my eyes and yawn. I didn't get all my sleep out.

Before I wonder too much about where she is, she quietly comes back into the room from being in the bathroom, looking down at her cell phone. She's wearing a jean mini-skirt with a dark green polo shirt and a lobster-shaped nametag pinned to her left breast. Her shirt is unbuttoned around the collar all the way down, making a V-neck and exposing the top of a purple hickey that I left on her boobs last night. She has on a causal pair of black Vans and her hair is tied up in a high ponytail with her side bangs dangling in her face. I can't see her face from a frontal view, but I can tell that she's wearing eyeliner and some mascara. She looks gorgeous as always but what the hell is she doing up? She locks her phone, stuffs it in the back pocket of her skirt and she jumps slightly when she sees that I'm sitting up. "Hey sleepyhead." She immediately smiles and walks over to me. Without any more words, she leans down and kisses me on my lips. "You can go back to sleep for as long as you need to. I wasn't expecting you to be awake so soon." She strokes my hair. She smells good. She sprayed some perfume on.

"What time is it?" I ask her, still trying to formally wake myself up.

"7:30." She stops rubbing my hair and starts whirling around her room like a mad woman. She seems to be walking a lot better this morning so maybe I really didn't hurt her too badly last night. She rummages through her drawer and pulls out a sock. She reaches in that sock and pulls out a twenty dollar bill.

"What the hell are we doing up?" I just want to lie back down for a few more hours. We didn't go to sleep until 1:30 last night. We had sex until 12:45 exactly and we didn't finish showering and stuff until like 1:20 and we passed out soon after that.

"I have to go work. My shift starts at 8:00. I don't know what you're doing up." She stuffs the money in her pocket too and looks at me.

"You work today?" I raise my eyebrow.

"Um, yah." She says it like I should've already known. I mean, I did know that she works…I just didn't know it was a morning shift. "8:00-5:30."

"…5:30?" She nods her head. "…I thought we were going to go look at lawyers today. I thought you were coming with me."

"We can go after I get off work, can't we? I get off at 5:30…I'll probably get off at 5:00 though because it's Sunday and Sundays aren't busy. Tony'll probably let me go home early. We can just go when I get off."

"What kind of lawyers' offices are going to be open at 6:00 in the evening, Jo? We have to drive all the way up to Pensacola, first of all. Second of all, I'm supposed to get Lyla today so it has to be early. I was thinking that we were going to go around 1:00 or 2:00. That way I can be home long before it's time to get Lyla." I sigh. Did she really forget that today was such a big day for me?

"…I'm sorry, Alex. But I have to work today." She looks like she really is sympathetic. "I was under the impression that we were going to go after I got off of work. I thought you knew that I worked mornings today, considering the fact that I had to come home last night. I just thought you knew. I'm so sorry. It's my blunder." She sighs too. "…We can always go tomorrow?"

"No, Jo! We can't! It has to be today! I have to pick a lawyer ASAP so that they can represent me!" She jumps back when I yell at her. "You KNEW how much this meant to be…I can't believe you'd just…."

"Alex, wait a minute! I work! It's not like I'm blowing you off to go hang out with somebody else, I have to WORK, baby. I have to work." She's raising her voice but it's in such a gentle way that it's not really yelling. "I'm sorry. I can go with you tomorrow though."

"Well I have other things I have to do tomorrow my damn self, Jo. I have to go see about my own job tomorrow. It has to be today." I shake my head. "Can't you just call off?"

"No?" She raises her eyebrow. "I just called off yesterday to stay home and take care of you. I called off yesterday, I just took a week off for Disney last month and I'm sure I'm going to need to be requesting days off here shortly for court hearings. I can't call off again. Tony's not going to keep putting up with me calling off."

"Well so what! Jo, you know what this means to me. This is for my daughter. I need you there for support. You HAVE to be there. Can you please just call off?"

"…Are you serious?" She tilts her head to the side and looks at me like she can't believe what I'm saying. "…Alex, this last week…any time you needed me, I came running. No matter what time of day, no matter what. I came running whenever you called. And you know I support you. You know I'm in this with you 100%. Can you just be fair to me for five seconds? I have to work today. If I call off, I'm going to lose my job. MY JOB, Alex. It's my job. I have to go to work. I'm sorry that my schedule conflicts with yours, I really am. But I can't keep calling off when I barely have days and shifts to begin with. I just called off yesterday. I can't keep calling off. This last week has been ALL about you, Alex. But it has to be about me for once. I need you to understand that I want to be there with you but I can't. Can you understand that? I'm so supportive of you…"

"Bullshit Jo. Bullshit because you can always call off." Her jaw drops when I say that. "You know how much this means to me and you promised that you'd be there. You know how much I need you right now. If you were so supportive, there wouldn't be a thought. You'd just call off without hesitation. I'd do it for you. There shouldn't even be a debate about it. You should just call off and the fact that you won't speaks volumes. I'm so used to you being selfless…it hurts to actually see you be selfish."

"I'M SELFISH?!" She steps toward me. "NOW I'M SELFISH?! BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO CALL OFF MY JOB, I'M SELFISH?! REALLY ALEX?!"

"Call it like I see it." I mumble.

She puts her hand on my face and pushes my face back. "Fuck you." I can tell that she wanted to do more than mush my face like that. I can tell that she really wanted to punch me but she steps away. "I'm the FURTHEST thing from selfish." She bawls her hands up into fits. "I'm going to work now. Make sure you lock my fucking door on your way out of MY house." She turns around and storms out of the bedroom.

I didn't really mean that…but I can't take it back now.


	52. Crazy

Little bit of **M** rated language in this chapter.

* * *

I unclasp the black lid off the top of the blender and put it down on the countertop while I pick up the brush to clean it. While there are days that I hate coming to work and wish that I could go home as soon as I walk through the door, today is not one of those days. Today is one of those days where I'm actually grateful for work because being around my friends and ding busywork is keeping my mind off the fact that I really want to choke the life out of Alex right now. Since I've known him, Alex has done some pretty screwed up things to me but I can honestly say that he's never pissed me off the way he pissed me off this morning. He didn't even piss me off this badly when he brought Stacy to my damn job and I think that was pretty piss off worthy. I just can't believe he had the audacity to call me selfish when I've literally been the most selfless person in his life as of late. I'm the farthest thing from selfish and honestly, it hurts that he would say that I am. The fact that he would even twist his lips to say that word—of ALL words—to me. I'd honestly be less offended if he called me a bitch or something. Hell, at least I _know_ that I'm a bitch sometimes. Yes, I can be a bitch when I'm provoked or pissed off or on my period. I know this already. But selfish? I'm NOT a selfish person. How does refusing to call off work make me selfish? If you ask me, I think him even asking me to call off makes him pretty selfish. It took every ounce of strength in my body not to choke him when he said that to me. As everyone already knows, my temper is pretty explosive and I don't know why but oftentimes, my first reaction is to hit. When he pissed me off this morning, I swear I had to count to ten and pray to the god that I don't even believe in to give me the strength not to hit that man. When I walked over to him, I walked over with the intention to punch him right in his goddamn face and I might've even spit on him with the way I was feeling.

Now, it doesn't take much to piss me off in general, but it takes A LOT to make me want to spit on you. He pissed me off BAD because I thought about it. I really thought about gathering up the nastiest, grossest, slimiest wad of spit in my mouth and chucking it at his face. That's how pissed off I was with him this morning. I don't think anyone understands how angry I was when he said that to me. I could literally feel my blood pressure rising up the more I stood there and looked at him so really, the only option I had was to leave. If I would've stayed there, I would've ended up spitting on him and/or punching his lights out. I ended up being a whole 20 minutes early for work but I had to get out of the house before I did something that I would've regretted. I don't even think he realizes exactly how bad he pissed me off with that comment because he just sat there on the bed and looked at me like I wasn't going to do anything. Even after I mushed his face back, he looked at me like I wasn't going to do anything. I have every reason to believe that if he had been in my head to hear the horrible things I wish I could've done to his sorry ass, he would've left me alone.

Honestly…I don't think I could've showed that kind of restraint with anyone but Alex. If it were Mark that pissed me off like that, I most likely would've beat the hell out of him. Hell, even if it were my own mother, I would've taken a chance and hit her for pissing me off like that. I'm not kidding when I say that Alex is the ONLY person on this planet that I exercised that much restraint with. I don't know how I did it when my blood was literally boiling but somehow I did it and I got out of MY house without causing serious bodily harm to that man. It took me a long time to cool down after that, too. Luckily for me, Tony stuck me behind the bar today because if I had been waiting tables after that, I probably would've gotten fired the SECOND someone asked me what the soup of the day was, even though it's listed on the menu. The bar doesn't open up until 10:00 so for the first two hours of my shift, I spent my time stocking the liquor on the shelves, making sure the shot glasses were clean, stocking up on coasters and filling the ice machine for the beer. It really did take until 10:00 for me to calm down. Alex pissed me off at 7:30 and I wasn't calm again until 10:00. I'm pretty much over it but if I think about it, I still get irritated all over again.

I pick up the brush and start cleaning out the blender so it'll be ready in case I have to mix daiquiris or margaritas, but also because I'm bored and I want the time to pass. I was expecting it to be a boring day because Sundays are always boring but I've literally only had three customers so far. It's 3:30 and I've been here since 7:40. I've been here since 7:40…and I've had three customers total. This takes "slow day" up a notch. I wish the time would go faster because even though I'm still incredibly annoyed with my boyfriend, I do actually want to go home. I mean after all, it's nothing but a fight. It's not like we both threatened to kill each other or anything like that. We had an argument and I'm sure that by the time I get off, it will have blown over. And even if it hasn't blown over, I'm still going down his house tonight even if it is only for a little while, because I want to see Lyla. To be honest, I'm really not all that excited to see Alex after what happened this morning but I _am_ excited to see Lyla. "Hey Killer…finally put the claws away?" Since it's a super slow day both in the bar and on the floor, Macy sits down at the bar next to Luke, who's counting out Lucille's charge tips. Kaylee's working today too but she's on break right now. "Or should I still run for cover?"

"She's actually been pretty pleasant for the last few hours, Mace. Don't jinx it." Luke wraps a rubber band around Lucille's stack of charge tips and slides them across the counter to her while she's doing her cleanups. "You know, after she verbally abused the blender this morning and took her frustration out on the shot glasses." Luke adds his piece in to what Macy was saying about me, which makes the three of them all laugh.

"Screw you guys." I pop the cap back on the blender and toss the brush in the sink. I lean against the counter and sigh. "I told you that I was in a bad mood. I gave you all fair warnings, didn't I?" I swat my bangs out of my face and drum my fingertips along the marble countertop. "It's not like I came in here this morning, threatened to blow up the place and fail to give you guys a warning. I told you all when I walked through the door this morning that you shouldn't mess with me." I grab a couple potato chips from the bag sitting next to Luke and stuff them in my mouth.

"Care to tell us why you were in such a foul mood though?" Lucille finishes rolling her last three pieces of silverware, picks her tips up off the counter and comes over to us so she can join in on the conversation. "Because usually when I come back after having a day off, I don't come back ready to chop people's heads off." The three of them laugh again which makes me roll my eyes. "Oh Jo, we're just messin' with you. You know we love you…even though you have a horrible temper." I squint my eyes at her. "What? You do. You get mad if someone asks what the soup of the day is. You get mad over the simplest things. I used to think you were the sweetest thing until I saw you ready to castrate a man over asking about the soup of the day."

"Because if they would take the time out to look at the front of the goddamn menu, the soup of the day is listed right there. I don't get how that _doesn't_ annoy you guys." I run my fingers through my bangs and suck pieces of chewed up potato chip out of my back teeth using my tongue. "No, but I was seriously ready to castrate _Alex_ this morning. He's the reason I came to work in a bad mood." I cover my eyes with the palms of my hands and yawn. I started realizing about an hour ago how tired I actually am. I went to bed last night somewhere between 1:00 and 1:30 in the morning and I woke up this morning at 6:15 so I could take a shower, get dressed, eat something and come here. I thought I got adequate sleep last night but I'm really starting to feel all that sex I had yesterday. It's starting to catch up with me. I rub my eyes hard and sigh. "I don't know why he insists on fucking with me when I have to come here for eight hours and put up with the general public. There should be a rule against that. There should be a rule that boyfriends can't piss off their girlfriends before they have to go to work. You guys are right, I do get pissed off easily but this morning? I was ten steps past pissed off. That was the worst mood I've been in in a while and Alex singlehandedly did that to me. He deserves a medal or something." I mumble that last part.

"Alex pissed you off?" Macy's jaw drops. "But he's so sweet. The way he comes in here just to sit with you sometimes. He's so sweet. What did you do to piss him off? He's literally the sweetest guy ever, Jo." I raise my eyebrow at her. There's a totally different side of Alex that nobody I work with knows about. The side of Alex that is a complete, total, utter bastard. He's the furthest thing from a sweetheart. I'd like to kick him in his balls right about now. "…Not the biggest sweetheart in the world?" I shake my head, still giving her the raised eyebrow look. "Well spill. What'd you guys argue about?"

"Because he's a flaming asshole." I mumble, drawing my name with my finger across the countertop. "It's like he knows just how to piss me off. Nobody's been able to piss me off like that and he did it with one word. I really wanted to kill him this morning and I swear to god I would've if I didn't somehow find the strength to walk away. I walked away when all I wanted to do was fuck him up. He made me so mad."

"No offense, but I don't even know how it's possible to get mad at a man that looks like that. He could cheat on me and I'd be the one to apologize." Luke grabs a handful of chips and chomps on them.

"No, fuck that. I'm not afraid to call Alex out on his shit, and believe me…he needs to be called out sometimes." I admit that it's hard to get mad and stay mad at Alex. It's hard to get mad at him because he's just so…ugh. But staying mad at him is hard too, especially when I think about him. I'm still mad at him though and I've been mad for a few hours now, which is a new record. "He has to do something today. It's real important and it's hard for him to do and he really wanted me to be there for him but I had to be here instead. So I told him that he could push his thing back until tomorrow and I'd be able to come with him then. But he started going off on me talking about he couldn't push it back and shit. And he asked me if could call off but I told him no since I called off yesterday and he went off on me. He called me selfish, like…I'm not selfish. Anyone that knows me knows that I would give the clothes off my back for someone. I'm not selfish by any means and the fact that he called me something that I'm not…he irritated the hell out of me with that one."

"If it was that important to him, maybe you really should've just called off." Macy shrugs. "It's not like Tony couldn't have found someone to take your shift. He would've called someone or asked us to double out. If it was all that serious, why didn't you just go ahead and call off?"

"Because it really wasn't that serious. I mean, it's important but it's not something he couldn't have pushed back a day or two. He was just being a big ass baby about it. I wasn't about to call off again, especially when I just called off to take care of his stupid ass yesterday. I know I said that I was sick yesterday but I wasn't. I called off because he was. He was holed up in his house for a week straight, too sick to eat or drink or even wash his ass. I called off yesterday to take care of him and he's gonna have a baby bird because I told him that I couldn't call off today just to go to his stupid appointment that's not even mandatory? He could wait until tomorrow. I'm off tomorrow and I can go with him then. He's just being a giant cry baby."

"Trouble in paradise?" Kaylee comes back in from her break and sits right down next to the three of them, joining in the conversation. "Is the happy couple going to break up?"

"No." I shake my head. "It's not that bad. It's not break up serious; we'll be fine. He just irritated the shit out of me this morning is all." I lean against the counter and glance at the clock on the wall, sighing when I find that only ten minutes have passed. Today is going so freaking slow. Venting to my friends about Alex kind of just made me feel a little bit better though. I'm not proud of the fact that I had to lie to them a little bit but I guess it's not so bad since I didn't necessarily really lie. I didn't really lie…I just bent the truth a little. He wasn't sick and it wasn't an appointment he had to go to but I think they caught the gist of the situation. It's not exactly my business to tell them about Lyla and how she got taken but the only way they could understand the full extent of the argument is if I told them about how I called off yesterday just to tend to him. Because I'm sure to them, I kind of did sound like a selfish bitch a little bit. My boyfriend needed me and I chose my job over him; that's what it sounded like to them. But that wasn't the case and I didn't want them to think it was so I lied a little bit. "He's an asshole, sure. But he's _my_ asshole…you know?" I look at the four of them. "I love my asshole." I poke my lip out. I'm starting to soften a little bit, probably because Kaylee put the thought of breaking up in my head. Alex pissed me off bad this morning but I wouldn't break up with him for it. I love him too much for that.

"Whoa…" Lucille raises her eyebrows in surprise this time. "You love him and you haven't even rolled around in the hay with him yet. Speaks volumes." I crack a smile at that while the rest of them laugh. "What? I'm serious. I didn't fully know that I loved Frank until we did the deed. It's a big part of a relationship and I never really believed you could tell that you loved someone until you went to bed with 'em. Jo's already saying that she loves him and she's made it clear on more than one occasion that her relationship with her man isn't exactly…" I turn my head to the side so they won't be able to see the fact that I'm blushing. For the entire time that Alex shut me out, I would come here and vent to my coworkers about our relationship and how it was progressing and I told all of them that we weren't having sex. So as far as they know, we're still not. "You're blushing." Lucille points out.

"She totally is." Luke chimes in. I bite my lip but the smile spreading across my face is entirely too big to be hidden. I'm totally giving myself away here. "Oh, spill….spill, spill, spill. SPILL!" I cover my face with my hands and try to keep my composure. I actually wanted to keep the fact that Alex and I had sex a secret. It's not that I'm ashamed of what we did or anything of that nature, it's just that I want to keep our sex life private. I think sex is something that should be private, shouldn't it? "You had sex with him, didn't you? Spill!"

I part my fingers so I can see through them and I find that they're all staring at me, waiting patiently for me to tell them details about the sex I had with Alex. Sometimes I forget what a hot commodity my boyfriend is. I remember hearing lots of things about him when I first moved here, I remember all these women constantly drooling over him and I remember how my coworkers used to gawk at him. Now that I actually call him my boyfriend, I tend to forget about those things…probably because I don't think of Alex as a piece of meat like all the women in this town. I've gotten to know him and I've fallen in love with his personality rather than his looks so it's easy for me to forget about the fact that I'm dating the guy that everybody wants. I sigh and take my hands away. "Fine." I roll my eyes and inevitably end up smiling again. I can't stop smiling for some reason. "I had sex with him for the first time yesterday." I admit to them. I also have to admit to myself that it feels kind of good to have friends that I can tell about all of this. All four of them clamp their hands over their mouths and look at me like I'm telling them a really good story. "We did it twice yesterday."

"And?!" Kaylee prods. "Was it every bit as amazing as you thought it would be? Was he freakishly good in bed? Because when I picture a man like that…I don't really think there's anything he can't do. Was he perfect? Did you guys have it all rough and hot and dirty? What's his junk like?!"

"Kaylee!" I put my hands up to stop her. "Come on…"

"WHAT?!" She throws her hands up. "If he has a small dick, that's fine. As long as he knows what to do with it. Size doesn't really matter, it's about what you do with it."

"I second that." Lucille raises her hand. "Doesn't always matter how big it is, as long as the guy knows what he's doing with it. You can have a cucumber that won't get the job done like a carrot." I put my hand on my forehead and just shake my head. I can't believe they're really asking me about my boyfriend's junk. "With that being said, what is he? Is he a cucumber or a carrot?" I just shake my head again.

"He must be a baby carrot." Macy chimes in. "That's the only reason she'd be so scared to admit it. I'll tell you guys in a heartbeat that my boyfriend's not exactly the biggest but he gets the job done. Alex must be tiny…she's all embarrassed to tell us." I close my eyes. I can't believe them.

"There's no way that man is small." Luke says, confidence clear in his tone. "I've seen his prints. When he walks in here? Especially when he's wearing jeans, it's totally easy to see his print. He's not small. There's no way." My eyes widen by about ten whole sizes. I cannot believe these people are sitting here talking about my seeing my boyfriend's dick print through his jeans. Oh my goodness, my friends are pervs. "He hurt you. That's why you're so embarrassed to tell us about his size. Am I right?" I pinch the bridge of my nose. Or I'm just embarrassed because you guys are trying to get me to gush on my sex life? "You're all little…can't imagine you can take much there, Jo."

"It's okay if he hurt you. Brian used to hurt me too. I got used to it after a while." Kaylee adds her two cents. I really can't believe them. I really truly can't believe them. "And like Luke said, you're pretty small, so…"

"I hate you guys so much." Still shaking my head, I find a place to start. Something tells me that they're not going to let this go. They're not going to let me live it down so I might as well just tell them about it, I guess. Besides, they're my friends. Isn't this what friends do? Don't friends sit around and discuss the incredible sex they're having or not having? They've talked about their sex lives around me before and honestly, I always kind of wanted to chime in but I couldn't because up until yesterday, I hadn't had sex in a very long time. Now I finally have grounds to join in on the sex talk and I can't. "No, he's not a baby carrot, Macy. He's…he's…" I run through a bunch of foods in my mind because that seems to be the theme here. "He's a banana. Clearly a banana…definitely a banana." I nod my head, satisfied with my comparison. "And yeah, he did hurt me but only for a minute. It's because…" I sigh. "Okay, so I haven't had sex in a really long time before yesterday and since it's been a while, I kind of just…I forgot, okay? I forgot how to take…"

"You forgot how to take a dick? Oh Jo…" Macy puts her hand on my shoulder. "Jo…"

"Stop it!" I put my head down. They're making this so hard. "I mean I kind of forgot but it came back to me. And at first it was…" I lick my lips. "We had sex twice yesterday. We had sex once in the morning and once at night. The morning sex was bad, guys. It wasn't horrible but it was boring because he was trying to be all nice and passionate for our first time and I appreciated that. I still…I still came and everything but it was boring. It was very mediocre and basic. It was typical missionary and that's it." I shrug. "But the night sex…" I roll my eyes and shake my head at the same time. "The night sex was…wow. It was everything. We couldn't even make it to the bedroom, that's how crazy it was."

"So where'd you guys fuck at if you didn't make it to the bedroom?" Kaylee asks.

"…On the kitchen table." I'm so embarrassed to admit that. Oh dear god I'm embarrassed.

"ON THE TABLE?!" Lucille's jaw drops. "Jo! People EAT there! You know how unsanitary that is?! People EAT there and you two got all your bodily fluids on it!"

"I know!" I cover my face again. "But we couldn't make it. We walked through the door and clothes started coming off. I had every intention of getting to the bedroom but he started going down on me and I just…"

"He ate it?!" Macy perks up. "Oh my god, you gotta tell me. What's his head like? Does he eat it good? Good head is such a turn on. You gotta get a man that knows how to eat it good though. Was his head good?" I nod my head slowly. "How about the dick? Was that good too?" I nod my head again. "I'm so happy for you, Jo! You needed it so bad!"

"I did." I shrug. "I'm not gonna lie to you, I did. I needed some good sex in my life. It's been far too long. But I really wasn't…" I sigh. "I needed some good sex…but I wasn't expecting GREAT sex. It was good at first but then like he kind of just turned me around and you know, did the whole doggy thing and then it was great. I dunno…new subject."

"He bent you over the table?" Luke dwells on what I just said.

"Yes, Luke. He bent me over the table." I really want a new subject. This is so awkward.

"That sounds so hot. You and Alex should make a porno." I just glare at him for saying that. "WHAT?! I'd watch it just for him…" He shrugs. "I just can't believe you finally got some. You needed some and you finally got some."

"Yep…and I'm probably gonna get some tonight too." I pluck one single potato chip out of the bag and hold it next to my mouth.

"I thought you said you guys were arguing though." Kaylee reminds me.

"There's nothing like some good make up sex, am I right Jo?" Lucille takes Kaylee's comment for me and all I do is nod.

I think I'm glad that I never joined in the sex conversations now.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Yeah, and I was thinking…when I get custody of her back, I was thinking about maybe getting a restraining order or something…" I scratch the stubble on my chin and clear my throat. I'm already tired of today. It's not even 4:00 yet and I'm already sick of today. On the bright side, I found a lawyer. I found someone to represent me and he seems like he knows what he's doing. I looked around for about an hour before I found this guy and since then, we've been talking. I thought I was going to have to make an appointment to see him but when I walked into his building and talked to his secretary, the said that he would be able to see me today. I wasn't prepared to sit here and talk to him for three hours straight, that's for damn sure. I didn't know that telling him my story would be a three hour process but with the questions he had to ask me and all the paperwork we had to do, it surely did take three hours. "I want to get something in writing that says that my mom's gotta stay away. Like a restraining order or a PFA or something. I don't care what it is, just something that says she's gotta stay away for good."

"That's reasonable and certainly doable." He scribbles that down on the yellow notepad paper and nudges his glasses up on the bridge of his nose with his index finger. He's kind of heavier set with gray hair, glasses and a knobby nose. But he's also brilliant. I've only been working with him for three hours and he's already made me feel a lot better. He's going to subpoena my mom's medical records so we can use those in court to prove that she's bipolar, he's going to see if maybe Aaron and Amber will be willing to come testify and tell the judge exactly what kind of mother we grew up with, he's going to get a written statement from Arizona, since she's Lyla's pediatrician so we can prove that she's been healthy as a horse and he's going to get the records from the psychologist and the doctor that Lyla had to go see. He's going to arrange for me to take a lie detector test sometime next week and he's going to work with my mom's lawyers to try and get a statement from Lyla approved by CPS. He asked me to sign a consent form for just in case if Lyla has to be called to the stand during the hearing for anything. I'm feeling really good about this. "Now I'm not promising anything, but I'm going to ask…is there a specific date you have in mind for the hearing? I can try and get it fast tracked but like I said, no promises. But I do know a few guys that work down in the family courts and I might be able to set that up for you."

"I don't want to inconvenience anyone or anything. I'm extremely grateful for the time that you've already put in with me, Mr. Abrams." I use my professional tone for the first part of this statement. "But I've got her registered to start preschool on September 1st. I know it's already August 17th so it's asking for a lot…but I would really, truly like to be there for her first day of preschool if it's not that much of a hassle." I've actually been thinking about that a lot since I saw her yesterday. While we were playing Candy Land, she asked me and Jo if she was still going to go to preschool if she was going to be living with my dad and Jo told her that my dad would make sure she gets to preschool. Ever since Jo told her that, the thought of not being there for her first day of preschool has been bugging me. Seriously, what if all of this makes me miss out on her first day of preschool? I'll never get that back. I'll never get her first day of preschool back if I miss it. Maybe I sound like a bit of a goof, but I was actually excited to start the whole preschool thing. I was excited to have to pick her clothes out the night before, pack her lunch, drive her there. I was excited to hang up all her artwork on my fridge as it came in day by day. I was just so excited for this preschool thing to start and now there's a very great possibility that I won't be there to witness her very first day. "I know that's probably not possible, considering all the stuff we still have to do, but…that's what I would like."

"That's very possible, Mr. Karev." He writes down 8/30/15 on the paper. "If we keep moving right along and if I put in a few good words down there at the court house to a few of my friends, I'd say it's very possible that I can have your daughter back in your home by September 1st." He flips to a clean sheet of paper. "I can try and push to get the hearing scheduled for August 30th. If I get the hearing scheduled for then, I'd say it's almost a certainty that she'll be back before September. The only way she wouldn't be back in your home by then is if the judge cannot come to a decision and discontinues the hearing. In that case, Lyla would be returned back to your father and you'd be given another date pending the judge's approval. I don't forsee that happening, however." He starts chewing on the top of his pen. "With all our evidence, I don't particularly think your mother has a snowball's chance in hell at getting custody. With all the investigations coming up unfounded, coupled with the fact that your mother is mentally ill and subjected you and your siblings to years of abuse prior to being properly diagnosed, I do not believe any sane judge will give her custody. That being said, I do not know exactly how the judge is going to rule but I can almost definitely say that it will be within your favor."

"Thank you so much sir." I gather up the red folder that he gave me. All that's in the folder are copies of all the documents I signed today and a few forms letting me know what to expect in the court process. "Is there anything else we need to do today?"

"One last thing I need and then you're free to go." He says, flipping to yet another clean sheet of paper. I nod my head and sit back to listen. "In the event that the judge does not rule in either your favor or your mother's favor…which is rare, but can happen…I need to you if you have any alternative people you wish to be given custody? Like I said, this is very rare but I'm asking because it usually helps me win the case if I have two different people to fight for. You'll be my primary priority but just in case I see that things aren't going so well for your custody in the courtroom, I can throw another option at the judge and that usually helps win cases. I'm assuming you would want her to stay with your father if she couldn't be with you, so all I need is his name, number and home address."

"James…" My voice trails off before I can go any further. He's asking me to choose another person to take custody of Lyla if they don't rule in either my mom's favor or my favor. My dad's the logical option, sure. I know she'd be safe with my dad, I know he'd take care of her and I'd surely be able to see her every day. But… "Actually, I'd want her to be given to someone else." I run the scenario through my head once more and the second time I do, I just make myself way more sure of what I'm about to tell him. "I'd want my girlfriend to have full custody of her if I couldn't." I boldly state. I'm sure of that too. Not that I don't trust my dad to raise Lyla because I totally do but giving her to Jo makes way more sense. Jo could do it and she'd do a damn good job of it too. Giving someone else full custody doesn't necessarily mean that I wouldn't be allowed to see Lyla. I'd still be allowed to see her and if eventually Jo and I decided to move in with each other, Lyla would be able to live with us too. If she lived with my dad, she wouldn't be in my house at all. But more so than that, if Lyla can't have me as a dad then I would want her to have Jo as a mom. I wouldn't want her to be raised by her grandfather. I'd want her to have a mother that loves her, cares for her and wants to see her succeed. "Josephine Wilson. J-o-s-e-p-h-i-n-e. W-i-l-s-o-n. 811 Pembroke Drive, Millerton. 617-555-3598."

I watch as he scribbles down Jo's phone number. I'll run it past her later. It probably won't happen like the lawyer said but just in case they don't rule in either of our favors, she'll be given to Jo and I'm fine with that. I know Jo will be alright with it too. I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes until he's done writing. I still feel pretty bad about this morning and what's making me feel even worse is the fact that I've been so busy here talking to this man that I haven't been able to call her. She usually goes on break when she works morning shifts around 12:30-1:00 and I wanted to call her on her break to tell her that I'm sorry for what I said but I've been here for three hours and I missed her break. I really do feel bad for what I said to her. It was heat of the moment and I really didn't mean it but I said it and I can't take it back now but I can apologize to her. I made her mad enough to the point where she felt the need to put her hands on me. She didn't punch or slap me but she did put her whole hand on my face and push my face in and she must've been pretty mad to do that. I don't blame her for being mad either. I'd be mad too. I am a little bit bummed that she couldn't be here with me because she would've made this three hour ordeal a lot easier to deal with.

Don't get me wrong; I still am a little irritated that she wouldn't call off. I'm irritated that the one day I actually do need her here to support me, she wouldn't tell her job that she couldn't come in or try and switch shifts with someone. She didn't make any effort to be here. She's switched shifts with people before so I know she could do something like that but she didn't even try. She just went straight to work. More so than irritated with the fact that she wouldn't call off though, I'm irritated with the fact that she asked me to push finding a lawyer back. She knows what finding a lawyer means to me and the fact that she would even suggest that I should push it back made me mad. I can't just put things off, just like she supposedly can't just call off work. I planned on going up to the hospital tomorrow to see Arizona and catch her up on everything and see about when she can put me back on the schedule. I have other things to do. So I'm a little pissed off with Jo still but still, she didn't deserve for me to call her selfish. It was a poor choice of words and I do owe her an apology for that. She's not selfish at all.

"Alright Mr. Karev…I'd say our work is done here." He closes his notepad and stands up. I stand up too. "I'll call you once we have a court date scheduled and you just make sure you mail those pay stubs in to me." He holds his hand out to me. "Very nice to meet you."

I shake his hand back. "Nice to meet you too, sir. Thank you for your time."

 **X X X**

"Yeah, I just left his office. His name is Robert Abrams and he seems like he's really good at what he does. He said that he knows a couple guys down at the courthouse we'll be seen in and he's gonna try and get the hearing fast tracked for me. He told me that he really doesn't think mom has a chance at getting custody of her, which I already knew but it still feels good hearing a professional say that her chances are slim." I reach forward to my radio dial and turn the volume up so I can hear him. I hate talking on the phone through my car but I guess it beats the hell out of holding a phone to my ear using my shoulder. I turn onto the highway that'll take me back to Millerton and sit back to relax on my drive. I hate the fact that I have to call Michelle's phone to talk to my dad for extended periods of time but they might look at his phone records so to be careful, I guess I'll do whatever I have to do. "He also said he might try and get Aaron and Amber to come up here and just tell stories about the kind of mom she was growing up. He's gonna subpoena mom's medical records and get a list of all the different meds she's on…it's looking good for me, Pop."

"That's great, Al. I'm really glad you got some closure by going up there. Now all we have to do is wait, I guess." It sounds like he's at his shop by the sound of a saw in the background. I'd be a little surprised if he was at the shop on a Sunday. "But at least you know that you are gonna get her back. It's just a matter of when."

"Yeah. It's still a bunch of bullshit though. She shouldn't have been taken from me in the first place." The fact that she was taken from me still pisses me off a little bit so I just try to keep it under control. "Anyway, I told him that I want a restraining order against mom when I get custody back. I told him that I want something that'll ensure that she'll stay away. I want a no contact thing. Nothing at all. I want to sever all ties with her."

"That's smart. You gotta make sure nothing like this ever happens again and if that's the way to do it, go for it."

"Yeah…so what's she doing? She alright?"

"She's fine. She slept until noon today. When she got up, Missy made her some waffles for breakfast and we sat and watched some TV. She's excited about coming to see you tonight. She's napping right now though. She fell asleep watching some movie about a superhero dog."

"Sounds like my Lyla." I chuckle. "Speaking of dogs…I was thinking about getting her one. Maybe a puppy or something. She always wanted a puppy and I guess I could get her one now. She deserves a reward when she gets home for being so brave throughout all of this, don't you think? And she's always wanting to play with and pet Mrs. Jensen's dog. I thought about getting her one."

"Just make sure she understands that she's gonna have to clean up after it. She's not too little to get a plastic bag and pick up shit if it craps all over the house. Obviously you're gonna have to do all the training but if it's her dog, you gotta teach her a little bit of responsibility for it."

"Yeah, I know. Oh and dad listen…the lawyer…he made me pick someone else I'd give Lyla to if the judge doesn't rule in my favor or in mom's either. He said that he doesn't think it'll happen that way because it hardly ever does, but just in case, he wants another guardian that he could try to fight for. I don't want you to be mad, but I told him Jo. It's not that I don't trust you or anything Pop, it's just that I want her to have a mother if she can't have a father. It probably won't happen but just in case it does, I asked him to fight to give Jo full custody of her. I hope that doesn't upset you. I hope you understand that I just want her to have a mother if she can't have a father, that's all. That's my reasoning behind it. And you know Jo…you know we can trust her with Lyla."

"I understand that, man. I get that. I think that's a great choice. I mean obviously me and Missy can't look after her forever. We wouldn't be equipped to handle a teenager when the time comes and we're both pretty old…who's to say we'll even be around by that time? I get what you mean. And yeah, Jo could do it. Jo's an excellent choice. I'm actually pretty glad you thought about her." I'm glad he understands my reasoning. I'm glad that it doesn't upset him. "Speaking of Jo, is she with you?"

"Nah, screw her right now. I'm so mad her right now, Pop. I'm beyond irritated with her. I can't even talk about it."

"Oh god, what happened?"

"She ditched me! She knew how important it was for me that we go find a lawyer today so we could get the ball rolling and she told me that she wasn't calling off work and for me to go alone. She refused to call off work and come with me and her excuse was that she called off yesterday, she took a week off for Disney already and she's gonna need to request days off for the hearing. First of all, I didn't even know she called off yesterday and if I had known that she did, I would've told her to go into work yesterday and call off today so she could come with me. Second of all, Disney was last MONTH. It's been a month since she took that week off. And thirdly the hearing is going to be a ONE day thing and requesting days off and calling off are two totally different things. She's just being bitchy about it. She's all neurotic about getting fired and shit. She acts like she's making a fortune at her job. She's a waitress. She can afford to miss a two dollar tip here and there. It's not like I wouldn't help her out if she ever got behind or bills or whatever. She knows I would help her. She's just being neurotic." I sigh. "But I called her selfish and she got mad at me for that so I do owe her an apology but I am pissed that she wouldn't come with me."

"But Alex…no matter how you slice it, this is your problem. Don't dump your issues on that girl when they're not her issues to deal with. It's really not her problem that you're fighting for custody of Lyla. You're right, today was important for you but not for her. You don't get to pawn your issues off on Jo and make it seem like they're both of you guys' issues. She doesn't HAVE to be there to support you; she just is. She's supporting you on her own free will. It's not like she's your wife and Lyla's mother where she HAS to support you. She's doing it out of the kindness of her heart. And she _does_ have her own life. Alex, that girl put her life on pause for you for the last week. You can't expect her to constantly do it. Cut her some slack. I'm sure she wanted to be there but she couldn't. I'm sure she's sorry but you have no right to be mad at her, son. This really isn't her problem if you want to get technical. You're just being greedy and ungrateful. Just appreciate the fact that she's hung in there with you this far. I get why you would be upset over the fact that she's not there with you but you gotta get a grip. You know I'm always on your side, Al but not this time. You're in the wrong; not her."

"But Pop, all I'm saying is that if it were me, there wouldn't be a second thought. If it were me, I'd call off work in a heartbeat. If she needed me, I'd call off no hesitation. I'd call off and I'm a surgeon. She can call off as a waitress. That's all I'm saying."

"Don't downgrade her job either. Just because she waits tables doesn't mean that she doesn't have a real job. Her job is her job. It's the way she makes money to support herself, just like you. It's still a job and she can't call off a thousand times in a row. Not everyone's job is as lenient as yours is. I'm not gonna sit here and let you bash your woman, Alex. You should be treating her like a queen after the things I've seen her do for you this last week. And I taught you better than to bash any woman. Didn't I? Don't you sit here and talk bad about Jo when she's done nothing to deserve it. You're being very unfair to her right now, Alex."

"I do treat Jo well though, Pop. That's the thing. It's not as good as she treats me but I do treat her well. I treated her so well last night….I'm good to her. I'm going through some crap right now so it's not perfect but I am good to her. I am."

"You're not gonna convince me to be on your side here, Alex. You can't. You're wrong, no matter what. I am a big fan of Jo but not as big a fan of her as I am of you. And if I can tell you that you're being wrong, then you're wrong. You're wrong."

"Whatever, Pop…you just don't understand." I sigh. I think I'm getting annoyed because as I listen to him, I realize that he's right and I don't like being wrong. He's right though. I'm wrong. Jo doesn't have to support me. She's been doing it just because of the kind of person she is. It's not my right to pitch a fit whenever she can't. Like she said earlier this morning, it's not like she blew me off to hang out with someone. She blew me off to go make money. I don't have a reason to be mad at her. But I really hate it when I'm wrong and I won't admit it to my dad that I'm wrong, even though I know that I am. "Anyway, are you bringing Lyla over at…" My voice trails off again because during the middle of our conversation, a beeping noise starts sounding all throughout my car. I glance down at my touch screen radio to see what the issue is. Another call is beeping in. I tap the "view" button and see that it turns out that it's Jo beeping in. "…I'll call you back in a little, Pop. I've got another call." Without another word, I tap on the "end and switch" option and wait for my call to connect. I can tell it connects once I hear the bustling of the restaurant in the background. "Hello?" I answer. She doesn't answer back. All I can hear is the sound of people talking in the background, what sounds like a toilet flushing and maybe glass plates clanking together. Maybe she butt-dialed me. I look at the time. It's 4:45. She doesn't get off until 5:30 so she's still working. Yeah, she probably butt-dialed me. "Hello?" I try one more time before I hang up.

I hear sniffing in the background now…like the sound of soft sobs, maybe. "Alex?" I squint my eyes, trying to concentrate on the voice that just spoke back. It really doesn't sound like Jo. This voice is thick and quaky. It sounds like someone's shaking the body of the person that's speaking. "Alex?" There's more sniffing until it becomes apparent that whoever it is on the phone is crying…and crying pretty hard, too. "Are you there or not?" Whoever it is, they can't breathe. "Alex?"

"Yeah….it's me." I turn the volume up a little more so I can try and decipher who in the hell has my girlfriend's phone. "Who is this?" I decide to just come right out and ask instead of trying to play detective.

"It's Jo!" The tone of her voice raises a little but she starts gagging, like she's hiccupping during a cry. She's crying? "Where are you?!" She does not sound like Jo at all. Her crying voice is different. I've never heard Jo so upset before. I'm actually a little bit scared. She doesn't usually cry like this. Scratch that, she's not even crying. She's sobbing, bawling, weeping, wailing, blubbering…all at the same time. I hear her moan into the phone and it sounds like she's in pain. "Alex…"

"…Jo, what's wrong?" A million things are running through my head right now and all of them are making me physically sick to my stomach. Whatever it is, it has to be pretty bad to make Jo cry like this. She's not a crier. She doesn't cry much at all. She's crying harder than she was the night in Disney where she had a nightmare and I really didn't think she could cry any harder than that. "What's the matter? Tell me what's wrong. What happened?" I push down on my gas a little harder to go faster. "What's wrong?"

"I know you're mad at me right now…" She can't even control her sobs long enough to speak a full sentence. "And I'm supposed to be mad at you..." She sniffs. "I know you're mad but please…" I think I've finally identified why I couldn't recognize her voice. I've heard Jo upset before, I've heard her pissed off and I've heard her worried. I've heard her voice when she's been feeling all of those emotions but I've never, ever heard her while she was scared before and I really think she's scared and panicking right now. "Please, please…I need you to come sit with me. Just come in…come in and sit…sit…" She's stuttering and everything. "At the b-bar. Please come sit with me. It was slow…and everyone else got sent home…but it got busy and I'm bartending and I'm working with my friend but he's outside working on the patio and…" She's hiccupping so hard that it sounds like she's gasping for hair. "I'm the only girl in here right now and everyone's d-drunk and they're really trying to get me…I need you to come sit with me, please. Just until 5:30. I know you're mad but I can't go back out there. Please come sit with me."

"Where are you at? Right now, Jo…where are you at right now?" I'm trying my damnedest to keep my tone nice and calm but I'm fucking struggling. All that worry in my body is gone and it's been replaced with white hot, burning, bubbling anger. I squeeze the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles pop and my hands turn red. She's working and there are drunk, sick, fucks messing with her? I feel sweat collecting at my temple. My temperature just shot up. I don't think I've ever felt this kind of anger. "ANSWER ME, JO! WHERE ARE YOU RIGHT NOW?"

"I'm in the bathroom…" She whimpers. "I have to go back out there but I can't…I can't go back out there. Th…They're talking about me. They said that they want to…" She doesn't even say it and I'm so glad. I can think of a million things that men could think of to do to her and if she says something that my mind is thinking, my head is going to pop off and blow steam. I'm not stupid, I'm no stranger to men and I know exactly what a bunch of drunk men would do to a girl that looks like her. Plus she's wearing that damn skirt today…she doesn't need to tell me anything. I already know. "Are you coming?"

"Keep your ass in the bathroom." I don't meant to swear at her but it just comes out. I'm not mad at her. My anger is not in any way directed at her but it's just coming out. "I mean it, Jo. You keep your ass in the bathroom until I get there. I don't give damn who has something to say about it. Stay in the bathroom until I get there and until I can handle it. Stop crying. I'm going to take care of it. I'm on my way, I'm coming. Nobody's going to…" I backtrack. "Did anyone touch you? Did someone touch you?" I'm not sure I want the answer to that. If I find out that someone touched her…I'm gonna go crazy. When I get to that restaurant, I'm going to flip my lid if I find out that one of those men put their hands on her. NOBODY and I do mean NOBODY puts their hands on Jo. I don't care if they're trying to get a piece of fucking lint out of her hair, they will NOT put their hands on my girl. I don't give a good goddamn what it's for or what the circumstances are. Just don't touch her, simple as that. I'M the only man that will ever lay a hand on her for as long as I'm around. As long as she's my girlfriend, she's MINE and nobody touches what's mine. Just the thought of someone laying a finger on her…fuck. If I find out that someone put hands on her, I will go. the. fuck. off. If someone put their hands on her, they better be content with her being the LAST thing they ever touch because I'm breaking every last one of their fingers. I swear to god I'll go crazy in that restaurant. "Jo, answer me. Did anyone put their hands on you in ANY way?"

"Not…really." She sniffs again. "There's like…fifteen of them though."

"What do you mean 'not really'? Did they touch you or not?!" I didn't even know I was this crazy about Jo until just now. The fact that she called me crying because a bunch of no good perverts got her sitting in the bathroom of her JOB scared out of her damn mind? I don't give a fuck how "mad" I am at her, I'll go to war over this girl. I'm crazy about her. I'm gonna go crazy over this girl. I'm not gonna do anything dumb because I don't want to go to jail or whatever will come with me fucking a bunch of men up over assaulting my girl but if she tells me that someone touched her, I can't promise anything anymore. "Yes or no, Jo?"

"…No."

"Alright. Sit in the bathroom until I get there. I'm on my way."


	53. Anything But That

**A/N:** Some **M** rated language in this chapter.

* * *

I open up the door to the freezer and grab three more cans of Cult 45 off the top shelf. I kind of like days like this where it's so busy that I don't even have a spare moment to think, because days like this make the day go by so fast. It was so slow a little bit ago but it really picked up about an hour ago and I've been running around behind this bar like a tornado trying to keep up with everyone's demands. When I say that it was slow a little bit ago, I mean that in a literal sense. I mean that as in up until an hour ago, I was walking around with $27 in tip money in my apron. I've been here since 7:40 this morning and for the majority of my day, I only made $27. When I say that it really picked up an hour ago, I mean that in a literal sense too. I had $27 in my pocket an hour ago and last time I counted, I had $376. Big difference, huh? From $27 to $376 is a pretty significant difference. It might sound a bit strange, but I'm proud of myself in a sense. It's not like I made $349 in one hour by being lazy. I've been working my own ass off and kissing so much drunken ass to make this money and I'm kind of amazed that I can call my mom when I get off work tonight and tell her that she doesn't have to pay my car note this month. I made enough to pay my car note in ONE night. That's never happened to me before.

I'm not exactly proud of the way I've been kissing ass tonight for my tips but it's been working so I guess I can't complain too much. Honestly? I liked bartending way more back when I was single. A little bit of light flirting and flaunting my chest is about 75% of the reason why I have so much money in my pocket but I feel so guilty while I'm doing it. It's not like I sit there and talk dirty to the guys and flash them a whole nipple or anything like that. I mainly just call them "honey" or "darling" and smile at them. Sometimes I'll pour their beers in their glasses for them, I'll bend over so they can see a little bit of cleavage while I put their shot glasses in front of them and sometimes I'll wink at them. That's the extent of the flirting. And when I say I flaunt my chest, I literally mean that I unbutton my shirt all the way down to my collarbone and that's it. It's not like I'm some big huge slut while I'm at work but I still feel really guilty when I even have to parade around these men, knowing that I have my own man at home. You would think that I'm a stripper with how guilty I've been feeling with every wink, every smile and every pet name I've dished out today. It kind of feels like I'm a stripper with all the one dollar bills I have in my pocket too. Anyway, the flirting and stuff—no matter how unorthodox—has been getting me $16 for a $7 beer, $30 for a $20 mix drink and $20 for a $5 shot of whiskey, rum or vodka.

"Would you like me to pour your glass, honey?" I stop in front of the first man that's been here for a while with one can of beer that I grabbed. His name is Chris, I think he said. I don't mean to, but being that I'm the only tender working today, it's been hard for me not to eavesdrop and overhear most of their conversations. There are about 15, maybe 20 men sitting here at this bar and I think they all work together because every single one of them know one another and they're all dressed in white t-shirts and mud-covered jeans like they just came back from a construction site. I haven't been listening to them word for word so I'm not exactly sure of all their names but so far, I've learned that some of their names are Chris, Peter, Henry, Paul and Chuck. Since Chris nodded his head at me, I slip my fingernail underneath the opener on top of the can and pop open the beer. I pour it into his mug until the foam crawls up to the rim. "There you go. Let me know if you need anything else."

I take the other two cans down to two of the men that I haven't quite learned the names of. "Sorry about the wait for your beers." I apologize because they have been waiting for a little while. Everyone sitting here at this bar has been pretty nice to me tonight. They haven't been rude to me and they've been understanding that I might take some time to refill their drinks or whatever since I'm the only tender working. There's usually two of us back here but before Tony left at 4:00, he told Kaylee she could go home since it was so slow. We close at 7:00 on Sundays, which means the bar technically closes at 6:00 but I get off at 5:30 so if someone wants to come in here and get a drink, they have to get it through Luke, who's still running the floors until 7:00. He's outside on the patio though. It's still pretty slow for the diner so he's been keeping all his customers out on the patio just to make it easier on him. Macy got sent home before Kaylee so Luke's in the same boat as me with being the only one running the floors. "Is there anything else I can get you right now?" I ask the two darker skinned men that I just served beers to. One of them has a cleanly shaven bald head and the other has a little bit of curly hair on his head. Both of them smile at me, but the bald one's eyes go directly at my chest but I pretend not to notice it. My first couple times bartending, men staring at my ass and my chest used to bother me but I learned to ignore it eventually and my life is much easier now. "Just let me know if there's anything else I can get you guys." I wink at the two of them and hurry off in the other direction.

"You think she's single?" I hear them start to talk about me as I'm walking away, so I tune my ears up and start to listen. I know I probably shouldn't. I truly believe that ignorance is bliss in situations like this because I'm not conceited, but I know that these guys are most likely thinking terrible things about me. So although I know listening is probably only going to make me mad, hurt my feelings or upset me, I can't help but listen anyway. "Yeah, she's way too sexy to be single. Somebody already snatched her up." I grin to myself, wondering what exactly makes them so qualified to tell if a woman is single or not just based off her looks. If they really go around looking at girls and trying to figure out if their single based off their looks then they really must not have lives outside of this. I grab the damp rag out of the sink and take it back over to the bar counter. I coop up the ten dollar bill someone left me underneath an empty beer can, shove it in the front pocket of my apron and toss the can in the trashcan behind me. I take the rag and start scrubbing the dried beer off the counter. "Hey…" I hear slurred words being thrown my way so I pause from scrubbing the counter to look at who's asking for me. The curly haired guy chugs his beer until the mug is empty and slams it back down on the counter. "How 'bout another one?"

I toss the rag back into the sink and scurry back to the freezer. "More whiskey?" I stop at a man with sandy blonde hair and blue eyes that has an empty shot glass sitting in front of him. His eyes are red-rimmed and he's smirking, so I can tell that he probably doesn't need more whiskey but it's my job to serve them. It's not my job to police and babysit them and make sure they don't poison themselves. Still, he nods his head and looks like he's ready to slump over. "I'll be right back." I snag an empty strawberry margarita can and an empty glass bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade up off the counter, toss them away and finally make it to the freezer. I grab another Cult 45 from the freezer, pick the bottle of Jack Daniel's up and sigh. My feet are hurting but I can last another hour. I'm out of here soon enough. "Here you go." I put the can of beer in front of the curly haired one and hurry off to the blonde one so I can give him more whiskey. "Jack Daniel's, right?" I ask with a smile before I even pop the cap off.

"Thanks, sweetheart." He covers his mouth with his fist and belches softly. I take the cap off the glass bottle and top his shot glass off. No sooner than I've poured it is he already taking it to his head. He swallows it like it's nothing, puts the empty glass back down on the counter and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Can I buy you a drink?"

"I'm not supposed to drink on the job." I refill his glass, smile at him and screw the cap back on the bottle of whiskey. "Thanks for asking though. That's very sweet." I flip my hair over my shoulder since I took it out of the ponytail I had it in earlier.

"So how much do I owe you, beautiful?" Staring at me, he leans to the side so he can dig his wallet out of his blue jeans.

"It'll be $15 for the three shots." I put the glass bottle on the counter next to where I'm standing and get ready to pull out my money pouch to break a twenty for him in case I need to. He belches again, rummages through his wallet and hands me two twenties. "I said $15, sir." I hand one of the twenties back to him. He's so intoxicated that he doesn't even know what kind of money he's giving me.

"I know what you said, hon. You keep the change…just because you're beautiful." He winks his reddened eye at me and sticks his wallet back into his pocket. Essentially, he's giving me a $25 tip. I'm not complaining, but holy cow that's generous. I take a couple steps back, away from the counter and cash out the money for the shots into my money pouch. I stick a twenty dollar bill into the pouch, take out a five and stick the remaining twenty and the five in my apron with the rest of my tips. Just as I go to grab the bottle of Jack Daniel's to put it back on the liquor shelf, the man puts his hand on top of mine. "Since I can't buy you a drink on the job…what time _can_ I buy you a drink?" I smile at him and shake my head.

"I don't think my boyfriend would like that too much." I politely nudge my hand away from his and keep smiling. "Thank you though. I really appreciate it." That was the first time someone's actually asked me out while I'm working. When Bethany bartends, guys ask her out all the time but I'm not kidding when I say that Bethany is a little bit of a whore. She shows off her boobs, she wears tight miniskirts and she even gives some of the guys her number. She'll blow kisses at them and tell them all types of dirty things. I'm showing off the little bit of cleavage I've got and for the first time, I'm wearing a miniskirt today but none of these men will ever get my number and I think it's taking it to the extreme when you blow kisses and tell them how good with your mouth you are. Granted, Bethany walks out of bartending some nights with over $600 in her pocket but she whores around to get it and I won't do that. After I turn the man down, I take the bottle back to the liquor shelf and step back so I can check on everyone else. Everyone is pretty much satisfied at the moment, which is rare.

Like I said, I think they all know each other and work together because all of them are deep in conversation. Since I seem to have a free moment, I decide to start on my cleanups so I can get out of here at exactly 5:30 on the dot. I think Alex is supposed to be getting Lyla today at 6:00 so if I get out of here at exactly 5:30, I should have time to go home, take a shower and charge my phone a little before I walk down his house to see her. I start taking apart the blender so I can clean it again so it'll already be done so I can leave on time. As of right now, when I leave here and go over Alex's later, I'm going over there to see Lyla and Lyla only. I'm still pretty pissed with him right now and I've reached the conclusion that I won't become un-pissed until he apologizes to me. I just want him to apologize for calling me that word. I don't care if he doesn't apologize to me for HIM being selfish; all I want is for him to apologize for calling me that. I'm actually pretty content with not seeing him at all today but I do want to see Lyla so I'm going to knuckle down and deal with the fact that I have to see his stupid ass if I want to see her. I meant what I said to my friends earlier though. He's an asshole, yes but he's my asshole and I love my asshole. I'm not going to stay mad at him forever and I don't plan on breaking up with him or anything that falls into that category. But I do plan on being mad at him until I get an apology.

I finish rinsing the blender and head for the gate that'll lead me from behind the bar. I need to start sweeping from around the stools while I still have free time. I grab the broom, hold the gate open and slip from behind the counter. I turn my back towards the guys and start sweeping the floor around the gate first. Once I've swept all my dirt into a neat little pile, I bend over and put the dustpan down on the floor. Just as I start to sweep the dirt into the dustpan, I remember that I'm wearing a skirt today as opposed to my usual shorts or blue jeans. And I'm only bent over for a few seconds before I'm reminded— _rudely_ reminded—that I am indeed wearing a skirt. Something that feels like the palm of a hand is suddenly pressed against my butt and as soon as I feel it—whatever it is—touching me, I jump up, stand straight and catch a gasp in my throat before it can actually come out of my mouth. Still a little jumpy, I turn around and backpedal back towards the gate so I can go back to where I'm safe, behind the bar. I'm pretty sure someone just touched my ass but I can't really say that for certain, nor can I pinpoint who it was so I just don't say anything. I shake my head to clear my thoughts and just innocently return back to doing my work.

"I need an Apple Ale over here, miss." A guy at the total opposite end of the bar lifts his hand up. I nod my head at him and turn to get back to the freezer. I look through the shelves for a Redd's Apple Ale and grab the first one I find. All of a sudden, I have a really bad, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I really think one of these men grabbed my butt but I don't know which one it is. I don't feel very well all of a sudden. I can't decide what emotion I'm feeling. There's some confusion inside me, sure but I'm a mess between anger and…I don't know, maybe fear? I shake my head once more to clear my thoughts again and just put it off. Maybe I accidentally brushed against part of a stool or a piece of the counter or something. And if someone did touch my butt, at least I'm safe back here. They can't touch me if I'm back here. I'm just gonna keep my head down and do my work. I'll be out of here pretty soon anyway. Moving at a slower pace, I walk the drink over to the guy that asked for it. "Thanks, babe."

"You're welcome." I maintain my politeness even though I'm admittedly pretty uncomfortable with the fact that he just called me "babe." I drag my feet back over to the sink and pretend like I'm washing something when in reality, I'm using the little bit of privacy with my back turned to button my shirt up. My heart is starting to beat so fast that I'm beginning to feel lightheaded. One by one, I slip the white buttons back between the fabrics. I try to listen to whatever song is playing on the speakers overhead, but my ears can't help but tune into their conversations again.

I have a really, really bad feeling about being the only woman in a room full of about fifteen to twenty men…

 **X X X**

After clambering myself into the smallest stall in the bathroom, my fingers slip as I try to twist the lever to lock the door behind myself. My vision is brutally clouded from the tears that are falling from my eyes because every time I blink to rid myself of the current batch that's filled up on the rims of my eyes, more fill up and it's a continuous cycle that makes it hard for me to see. Breathing heavy, I desperately wipe my eyes with the back of my free hand and sniff, freeing myself of tears just long enough to lock the door. Once it's locked, I clasp my hands over my eyes and try to calm myself down. I can't go back out there. I have about…45 minutes left of my shift and I really don't think I can finish it off. I can't go back out there. Me and my big mouth… I feel like I'm shivering but I'm not; I'm shaking. Tears are streaming down the palms of my hands that are covering my eyes, running down my forearms and collecting in the bend of my elbow. My head feels like I'm banging it off a wall, my throat hurts because I've been gasping to catch my breath and my entire body feels like it's just shutting completely down.

Me and my big mouth. I can't believe I told them that I get off at 5:30. I didn't mean to, I just…I can't even think right now. I can't think, I can't breathe, I can't function. They asked me and I just…I just said it. I can't think about anything besides getting out of here right now. I'm usually smarter than this. I usually don't bend over in front of guys while I'm wearing a skirt, I don't usually tell strangers about myself and I'm usually smart enough to deflect questions; especially when they ask me what time I get off. I didn't know what to say! I tried to lie about it but they just kept asking and asking and asking…I didn't know what to say! All of them were asking! They were asking and calling me their "babe" and "baby" and "sexy" and I just didn't know what to do. They said…they said they were going to wait for me. I don't know if they were just joking or if they were being serious but I'm too scared to find out. I can't go back out there. Not with the things they said to me…not with the things they were saying about me.

They're all drunk and that's the scary part. They're drunk and a lot of guys get all horny when they're drunk and I'm the only girl here and they're clearly horny right now and I told them that I get off at 5:30 and they said they were going to wait for me. It wasn't so bad at first but the more drinks they got in their systems, the bolder they got and the nastier they got. They kept asking me what kind of underwear I was wearing, how many drinks they'd have to buy me before I'd let them take me home…they were talking about having sex with me. All of them. All of them were talking about it and they were talking about doing it at the same time. And they were talking about where they were going to take me, whose house, who was going first and what order they were going to take turns having sex with me. I was trying to ignore them, I really was but they were yelling at me. They kept yelling at me and asking me what kind of…positions I like and one even asked me if I've done anal before. I really think they're planning to rape me. If there was just one guy talking about it, I wouldn't care. I would stay out there and I would toughen it out but there are seventeen of them. I actually counted to see exactly how outnumbered I am and it'd be seventeen against one. There are seventeen drunken, horny men out there and they want me.

The one guy even said that I'd be a good… I take my hands away from my eyes and clamp them over my mouth so I can turn around and aim for the toilet. I bend my knees slightly, hang my head over the toilet and as soon as I take my hands away, my entire body contracts and it sounds like I've just dumped a gallon of water into the toilet bowl. I hold onto the toilet paper dispenser and cough. I haven't eaten anything today, yet my stomach found something for me to throw up. It mostly came out in the form of just pure water but a few potato chip pieces came up with it. I can honestly say that I've never been so upset that I've thrown up before. All the times I've ever vomited, the reason was because I was sick. I've never cried myself into throwing up…until now. I sniff and close my eyes, resting my head against the toilet paper dispenser too. I swallow hard and take a deep breath. How could someone say such a thing? Even if you are drunk, how could you say that? How could your conscious mind allow you to say that a woman would be a good…rape? He said that about me. The guy he was sitting next to…he told him that he thinks I'd put up one hell of a fight and he said that he didn't care, because I'd be a good rape. Who says something like that? He made it sound like he's done it before.

I slowly pick my head up off the dispenser and reach forward to flush my puke down the toilet. I walk backwards until my back hits the cool metal door of the stall. Once I'm against the stall, I lean against it and slide down until my butt is on the floor and my knees are pulled up into my chest. I wrap my arms around my knees, put my head down on my kneecaps and feel my hair fall to the front of my body. I can usually get myself to stop crying but not this time for some reason. I don't think I've ever cried this hard but then again, I also don't think I've ever been this scared before. It took me a while to actually realize what I am and once I heard that man tell his friend that I would be "a good rape", it all set in. The thing is; that wasn't the nastiest thing that was said about me out there. Nope. One guy said that he'd "fill me up" if you know what I mean, one said something about wanting to "stick his tongue"…somewhere and there were a lot worse things said than the rape comment that I really don't want to relive. The rape comment is the one that scared me though. That's the one that made me realize exactly how outnumbered I am and the _way_ he said it gave me chills. He said it as if he's raped a girl before and wouldn't mind doing it again. He said it like he gets enjoyment out of raping girls. I mean, when you say that someone would be "a good rape", doesn't that kind of imply that you've raped someone before?

When I think about the fact that I have to go back out there…I feel nauseous all over again. I have to go back out there and that's what's scaring me the most. There's nobody out there watching the bar right now so for all I know, they could be trashing the place and stealing liquor. I'm not supposed to leave the bar unattended but if I didn't get out of there after hearing that man say how much he'd enjoy raping me, I might've broken down and cried out there. I don't know what I would've done but I just had to get out of there, at least for a second. I'm way too petrified to go back, too. I left them alone…what if they took the alone time to plan out what they're going to do to me? They planned out quite a bit already. They planned whose house they were going to take me to, they planned who was going to have sex with me first, they planned who was going to screw me in which positions…they did all of that in front of me. Imagine what kind of planning they got done without me? They probably thought up who's going to be the one to slip a roofie in my drink or whatever method they choose to drug me. But I have to go back out there. I have to go back out there until 5:30 and they already know that I'm getting off at 5:30. What if they sit outside and wait for me? Maybe Austin can handle the bar until 5:30. Maybe I can just hide out in here until 5:30 and sneak out through the back? Austin's nothing but a greeter and a seater…he doesn't know a thing about bartending but still. At least it's someone, right?

I have to go back out there. If I want to keep this job, I have to go back out there. After today, I really don't even think I want to work here anymore but I know that I have to. It's not like I have any other option. I have a rent to pay, an electricity bill to pay, a water bill, a garbage bill, a car note and groceries to buy. I don't make much here but it's been getting me by for the last three and a half months. I need a different job but this is the only thing I've got for right now so I have to go back out there. I'm so scared though. What if they do something to me? What am I going to do if they decide they want to have their way with me? There's nothing I can do. There's seventeen of them and one of me. If they band together and decide that they want to wait outside for me to get off so they can follow through with their little plan, what can I do? I can't fight them all off. I'm one person. I'm one five foot, five inch, hundred and thirty pound girl trying to take on seventeen construction workers. I'm so scared to go back out there but I have to…I have to. I want Alex so bad right now. I want him to hold me and give me one of his most comfortable bear hugs that I love so much. I feel so safe when he hugs me like that. I want him so bad. I want him to make me feel safe again.

He's pissed at me and I'm pissed at him but Alex…He's really the only person I want right now. I snivel, wipe my nose with the back of my hand and pull my phone out of the side pocket of my apron. I dial his number quickly since I know it off by heart and hold the phone to my ear. I know he's mad at me and I know I'm supposed to be mad at him but I really need him right now. I really, really, really need him right now. I need him. Every time he needs me, I come running. Can he please just do the same? "Hello?" He answers the phone on the third ring and already, I feel a little bit better by simply hearing his voice.

I really need him right now.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I don't even bother rolling my windows up, I just get out of the car, instinctively push the lock button on the remote and shove the keys into my pocket. The parking lot is pretty much empty with the exception of two white trucks that have the name of some construction company written on the side in black lettering. I have no idea what I'm about to walk into but I do know that if I catch someone so much as BREATHE her direction with the way I'm feeling right now, I'm going to beat the living hell out of a man. After I hung up the phone with her earlier, I tried to make it a priority to calm myself down before I walked into this building. I tried; I really did try but I couldn't. I just kept thinking about how she felt so unsafe and frightened that she had to hide in a bathroom and call me while she was WORKING. She's at her job. She should be able to go to work and feel safe at work. She shouldn't be ducking in bathrooms because drunken old bastards are making her feel uncomfortable. I tried so hard to calm down but the more I thought about why she called me crying, the madder I got and I'm anything but calm right now. I jog up the steps to get to the front door of the restaurant and yank it open, storming through it.

"If you're looking for Jo, she's bartending today." The goofy looking kid with acne and black glasses doesn't even bother grabbing me a menu. Everyone knows that when I come in here while Jo's working, I usually just want to come talk to her. They don't bother giving me menus when I come in here while Jo's working. I blow past the seating podium and nearly run back towards the bar. Just like she told me, there is a group of men sitting at the bar, drinking and laughing hysterically amongst themselves. There are about…maybe twenty of them, if I had to guess. And she was telling the truth; she really is the only girl in here. None of her other friends appear to be working today and the only people that are working are men with the exception of her. Glaring at each and every single man I walk by, I make my way back to the bathrooms. It takes some sort of inhumane, godlike restraint for me to leave them alone. 99% of me wants to snap out on all of them but somehow the 1% wins out and I just go straight to the bathrooms.

I don't care that I'm clearly a man about to walk into the ladies' room. I could give a damn about any kind of rules right now. I shove open the wooden bathroom door and barrel inside. It's quiet in here, with the exception of silent cries coming from the stall closest to the door. I look down at the floor to make sure that it's actually her and I can identify her solely by the two deep dimples in the skin of her lower back that's exposed by her shirt rising up around her waist. Well the dimples and of course the brown little dots on her lower back skin as well. "Jo." I slap the door with my hand. "Open up, it's me." I slap the door one more time and step back. As soon as I say "it's me", her lower back disappears and her feet appear in its place. I watch the latch on the door turn and the door flies open. Her face is incredulously red, blotchy and puffy. The skin underneath her eyes is puffing outwards, her eyes are bloodshot red, the skin around her nostrils is fiery red and her jaw is trembling. I'm a little bit taken aback by the way she looks because like I've said before, Jo's not much of a crier and I haven't seen her cry a bunch of times before. I only look at her face for a brief moment before all the anger I'm feeling washes away. "Come here." As if we're on the same page, as soon as my arms open, she rushes into them. She buries her face in the middle of my chest, throws her arms around me and starts uncontrollably, inconsolably sobbing. The entire bathroom is filled with the sound of her crying murmurs and hearing her cry is seriously ripping my heart into two pieces. "I'm here." I squeeze my arms around her entire body hard and drag my hand up her back and rest it on the back of her head. "It's alright. I'm here now. It's alright." Her entire body is shaking in my arms and I can just tell that she's very upset. "It's okay." I lift her up off her feet just slightly and squeeze her tighter. I just want to calm her down. That's my sole focus right now

"I know you're mad but I didn't know what else to do. I just wanted you. You can go back to being mad but please don't leave me here." I feel the fabric of my shirt constrict as she squeezes it. She's acting like I'm getting ready to leave and by squeezing me, she's preventing me from leaving. Little does she know, I have absolutely no plans of leaving her. "I know you're mad, I know, I know…"

"No…Jo, no." I hold her closer and tighter and press my lips to the top of her head. If I'm being totally and completely honest here, I forgot we were supposed to be mad at each other. I forgot all about this morning the second I heard her sobbing on the phone. Fuck being mad at her though. No argument in this world is ever going to make me mad enough to the point where I won't be here for her when she needs me. I'm not too mad to the point where I won't come hold her and calm her down. I don't give a damn how mad I was this morning, everything is irrelevant now. It was a stupid ass argument and me being stupid and selfish and a big crybaby. This is something totally different. There's nothing she could do to make me mad enough that I would turn my back on her. "Screw that argument. Screw it. I…I was being a dick this morning but all of that is gone now." I kiss her head again. "I'll do anything in this world for you, no matter how much you piss me off. You know that…and I'm not leaving you. I swear to God, I'm not going anywhere." She's finally calming down a little. "…What happened?" I loosen my arms around her and pull back so I can look her in her eyes. "What went on out there?"

"E-everybody…" She starts out by stuttering. I hate to do ask her to tell me what happened when whatever it was clearly messed with her pretty bad but I just need to understand the magnitude of what I'm dealing with when I go out there. I put my hands on her shoulders and rub them. "Everybody got sent home because it's really slow today and I'm the only girl here and I've been making a lot of money tonight but I'm the only girl and it sped up a little bit around here when I got a little bit of a rush at the bar and I'm bartending and the way you make money when bartending is when you flirt and act all nice and stuff and they were tipping me really well and everything was okay but then someone I think they touched my butt and I got scared so I stopped flirting and stuff but that didn't help and they were getting all nasty with me and there's just a lot of them and only one me so I tried to act natural about it but they were being so nasty..." She's ranting. Just like I remember her mother telling me back when we were talking on the beach, she's throwing everything at me in a big flood and I kind of got the gist of what upset her so much but with her rambling on and on like that I kind of lost her. I nod my head and stroke her shoulders some more. She lifts her hands up and wipes her eyes hard. "They were making plans to…to rape me. I just need you to sit with me, okay? Please sit with me. I get off in a little bit and I can go home but I can't go out there alone…"

"Nobody's gonna touch you." I wipe her tears with my thumbs and cradle her face in my hands. "Nobody is going to do anything to you. I'm not gonna let it happen. You hear me? I won't let it happen." She sniffs hard and puts her face back in my chest. "Come over here…" I guide her over to the sinks and turn on the cold water. I cup my hands underneath the running water and douse it on her face. "Calm yourself down, alright? Calm yourself down. I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna sit and when your shift's over, I'll walk you out. Everything's going to be fine." I douse more water on her face. "Just go out there and finish doing what you have to do. I'll be right there and I'm not going to let anybody do anything to you. I'm not about to let anything happen to you. Just go back out there. Alright?" She nods her head. "Alright." I kiss her temple. "Love you. I'm gonna go out there and sit. Okay?"

"Kay." She nods again and keeps trying to pull herself together.

 **X X X**

"Pew! Pew!" Although she's being pretty loud and obnoxious, I have to admit that I feel like this is the way my house should be. I should be standing at the stove trying to figure out how to boil pierogis and I should be annoyed with the loud noises of her playing rambunctiously in the living room. I have no idea what the hell she's playing but she's making a whole hell of a lot of noise in my living room. Being an only child for all of her life, she learned pretty quickly how to make fun for herself and how to play alone. She sounds like she's having a ball in there. "You gonna let the ghosts out! Hurry and get them back in the can! Hurry!" Just to make sure she actually _is_ alone in there, I lean to the side and peek into the living room. She's sitting on the floor with a Cinderella doll in one hand and the furry blue and purple monster from that monster movie in her other hand. Spread out on the floor in front of her is an alien doll, a naked Barbie, a naked Ken doll, and the horse from that Toy Story movie. "PEW!" She drops the monster doll and makes her hand into a gun shape and acts like she's shooting the toys that are on the floor. "PEW!" She picks the monster back up. "YOU DID IT SULLEY! You my HERO!" She makes the Cinderella doll kiss the monster which makes me chuckle.

Yeah, she's alone in there and yeah, she's having that much fun by herself. I shake my head and go right back to reading the directions on the back of the blue pierogi bag. I bet Jo would know exactly how to cook these things but she's not here right now and Lyla said that she's hungry now. My dad didn't feed her because he figured that I would want to do the whole dinner thing again tonight and him and Michelle went up to Pensacola for dinner while she's here. She hasn't eaten since lunch and she's hungry now; which is why I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to cook these things. If she wasn't hungry right now, I'd wait for Jo to come down and cook them. She should be here pretty soon. She went home after she got off of work so she could take a shower and stuff and she said she'd be down in a little bit. She was back to her usual self once she got out of that building for good. I told her to make sure she has a talk with her manager on Tuesday when she gets back to work to make sure he never sticks her alone behind the bar ever again. I want her to quit her job, honestly. I want her to quit and I don't want her to ever go back there but I'm not about to ask her to quit. The most I can do for her is offer her my support.

"We has to go into the magical kitchen…shh." From the corner of my eye, I can see Lyla crawling into the kitchen with her two dolls in tow. I glance at her from the corner of my eye to see what she's up to but whatever it is, I can tell she's trying to be secretive about it. Her blue jeans are falling down with every crawl she takes, exposing the pair of blue and silver Elsa underwear she's wearing today. Her pants are all entirely too big for her anymore, since she wears big girl underwear now. I think I'm gonna go pick her up some new clothes for preschool. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow, after I go see Arizona up at the hospital. I can tell that Michelle dressed her this morning, anyway. There's no way my dad did. She's wearing a pair of jeans and a pink t-shirt with matching pink socks and her hair is neatly brushed back in a ponytail. She looks up at me to make sure I'm not looking at her and once she thinks that I'm not paying attention, she starts crawling again. She crawls right over to the snack drawer and opens it up quietly.

"What do you think you're doing?" I keep my back turned but I can tell that she stopped opening the drawer because I hear it close again. I smirk and tear open the bag of pierogis since the water on the stovetop is boiling. "Didn't you already have three cookies, Lyla? You wouldn't be trying to get more, would you? Because you know that'd spoil your dinner."

"…Cinnawella wants one though. Just one. Um…her and Sulley will share it. Her and Sulley didn't get one before 'acause Bullseye and Alien and Barbie and Ken eated them all." Part of me—the part that still feels bad that she got taken away—wants to say "go ahead" and let her get another cookie. But the rational part of me knows that even though she got taken away from me and she doesn't currently live here, I'm still her father and I still have to parent her. I can't keep feeling sorry for having her taken away forever, can I? If I do that, she'll end up being spoiled rotten. I'm still her dad and I still have to parent her, even though I feel bad and want to give her every little thing that she wants.

"No more cookies, Lyla. Dinner will be done in a little bit. Go back and play." I dismiss her. I feel bad but I know that I did the right thing. No matter what, I still have to be a dad to her. As I start plopping the frozen pierogis into the boiling water, I heart the drawer opening again. "What did I say, Lyla?" I turn around and look at her this time. She has a guilty look on her face but her hands are clearly on the drawer. "I said go play. I said no more cookies. You can have cookies after you eat dinner." She gives me her "angry face" with her lip poked out. "I don't care. You can get mad at me. No cookies. Go back and play." I want to just give in and let her have the damn cookie. If a cookie makes her happy after she's been ripped out of her home, I should just let her have it…no. I have to be firm. I'm still her dad. I watch her throw her Cinderella doll down on the floor and cross her arms in a pout. "If you want to be like that then you know where you can go." I shrug my shoulders. She throws her Sulley doll down too and stomps her foot. "Okay then, go to the mat."

"NO DADDY!" She stomps her foot and screams at me. She's not telling me no as in, "no, I'm not going to the mat", she's telling me "no" as in, "no, don't send me to the mat." She pokes her lip out as if she's pleading with me. I say nothing to her and she knows that when I say nothing, I mean what I said. She sneakily starts to pick up her toys.

"Go to the mat, Lyla. Now." I point over at the laundry room door because that's where the mat is. As I've stated before, Lyla's a really good kid. Sometimes she can be bratty and sometimes she can get a little bit off the hook but she's generally a good kid and she doesn't really call for much discipline. Like right now, for example. She knows that I mean business. So even though she throws her head back and starts whining, she walks her little butt over to the laundry room door and sits down on the little red timeout mat. She sits cross-legged on the mat and quietly cries to herself. I sigh and continue dropping pierogis into the water because I know that I don't have to watch her. Lyla knows better than to get up off the mat before I tell her to. I could've just let her have the cookie though, right? I mean, it's only one lousy cookie after all. I could've just let her have the cookie. I zip the bag of pierogis back up and stuff them back into the freezer. It's best if I break myself of this habit now, though. If I get into this habit of giving her everything she wants just because I feel bad that she had to go through everything, I'll be right back where I started when I overcompensated for Jenna dying. I fell into the habit of giving her everything she wanted back when Jenna died and when I finally started to discipline her, she didn't take to it. I finally got her to understand that I mean business when I say something and I'm about to regress back to spoiling her because I feel bad. I can't do that. Like I said, I'm still her dad. I'm still her dad and I'm going to get her back and I don't want her to be a brat when I get her back.

I go over to the sink so I can wash my hands and I glance at her as I stick my hands under the faucet. She's sucking her thumb and rubbing the red carpeted mat with her other hand. She always, always, always, always starts singing when she's in timeout. I think it helps her pass the time faster so I'm not exactly surprised when I turn the water off and I can hear that she's singing; despite the fact that her thumb is in her mouth. "She a twap keen…inna…" She sniffs, moves her legs and keeps singing. "I inna mall getting fwy wiff my baby yeah yeah and I get wide wiff my baby…I inna kitchen makin' pies wiff my baby like hey, sup hello…" Why am I not surprised that she chose that song to sing? I shake my head at her and bend down to pick up the toys she threw. I'm still not happy she knows all the lyrics to Trap Queen. Why is a song like that even on the radio? I guess it's alright, as long as she doesn't know what a Trap Queen is though, like Jo said.

Speaking of Jo, right after I pick up Lyla's toys, my front door opens up. She looks a lot better than she did earlier. Her face has returned back to normal, her hair is neatly combed up into a ponytail and she's wearing a pair of sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt. She looks a hell of a lot better. "What are you attempting to make?" She kicks her slippers off at the door and shuts it behind herself. "It smells like you're burning whatever it is." She walks over to me and gives me a hug. I press my lips to her forehead, just in case she still needs that little bit of reassurance after the kind of day she had. She smells good too. I mean, Jo always smells pretty good but she smells really good right now. I can just tell that she got out of the shower, that's all. "Where's Lyla?"

"In timeout." I go over and stir the pierogis. "She was being a brat so I stuck her in timeout."

"Aw." She taps me on the shoulder. "Come here, Lyla!" She calls her.

"Mummy's home!" Of course, Lyla comes running into the kitchen. She runs right past me and straight to Jo. "Hi mummy." She wraps her arms around Jo's legs but Jo picks her up instead. "Hi mummy."

"Hi sweetie." Jo kisses her cheek and part of me wishes that Lyla was actually right when she said that Jo's "home". I wish this was Jo's home…

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"So…what'd the lawyer say?" I step out of my pants and toss them over on my chair. For some reason, Alex wanted to stay at my house again tonight. He claims that my little air mattress bed was comfortable as hell last night so he wanted to stay at my house again. Who am I to argue? I pull my quilt back and climb between the sheets. "You never did get around to telling me how the visit went. What's his name and stuff?" I lie down on my side of the bed and prop myself up with my elbow as I wait for him to come out of my bathroom. I'm really glad that we were able to just squash everything. Our first fight didn't last very long and I'm grateful for that. "Is he gonna call you with a date?"

He turns off my bathroom light and walks into my bedroom shirtless, wearing nothing but his boxers. "Robert Abrams is his name. And everything went pretty well. He basically told me that my mom has no chance of getting custody, which I already knew. It was nice to hear him say it though. He says that he's friends with a couple of people down at the courthouse so he's gonna see if he can get the hearing as soon as possible. He's gonna see if my brother and my sister will testify against my mom and he's gonna help m put in for a no contact order once everything is done. It looks good." He climbs into the bed next to me and lies down with his arm out. I take his invitation in stride and lay on his chest. He puts his arm around me and gets comfortable. "Everything's looking good for me."

"Good. I'm glad." I kiss his chest and close my eyes. After the day I had today, it's safe to say that all I really need is a good night's sleep. I'm so tired and I'm ready for this day to be over. "Hopefully he'll get the hearing in before she starts preschool. That would be great."

"Yeah, it would be." He mumbles. "I've got something to ask you, Jo…" I lift my head up to let him know that I'm listening. "…So the lawyer…he basically just told me that sometimes the judge rules in nobody's favor. He said that it's rare but it happens sometimes. And he said that in the event of that happening, he would like someone else to try and fight for. He wants a backup guardian, basically. Someone that he can push the judge towards giving full custody, in the event that neither me nor my mom win. I…I told him that I would want you to be the next person he fights for." My jaw drops but luckily, he can't really see it since we're sitting in darkness. ME? ME? He wants ME to have full custody of Lyla if he can't? What about his dad?! ME?! "I was thinking about it…and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that if she can't have a dad, then I want her to have a mom. If she can't have a dad Jo, I want her to have a mom. And I mean…you. You're the best thing for her, besides me. You're the next best thing. So I told him you. I hope that's okay….would you do it?" I don't know what to say. I mean OF COURSE I'd do it but me? He picked me? He means to tell me that if some kind of disaster happens where the judge says no to him and no to his mother, he wants the judge to give Lyla to me? He wants me to have full custody of her if he can't? Me? "I'm just not comfortable with the idea of my dad and Michelle raising her forever. They're older and she's going to be a teenager and she's gonna need someone to help her with the teenager stuff. I just…I hope it's okay that I said you, Jo."

"…Of course it's okay, baby." I just can't believe he said me. I'm…I'm honored that he would even think of me in that situation. "You know I wouldn't have a problem with taking care of her for you if you couldn't. You know I would do it…" I'm in shock right now. "Thank you…"

"No, thank _you._ " He rubs my back. "Now lie down…you had a tough day and I want you to get some rest." I do as he says and lie down on his chest. I'm still not over the fact that he basically just listed me as Lyla's legal guardian if he can't be. I mean, wow. He must really, really trust me. I can't believe he'd trust me with that. I'm honored that he thinks I could be a good mother to his daughter. I'm so flattered and shocked. I think I might cry. "…And while we're at it, can I ask you something else?" I nod my head against his chest. I can only handle but so much shock for one day though. I hope it's not as shocking as what he just dumped on me. "…Will you quit your job?"

….He could've asked me anything but that though.


	54. Changes

She places her hands flat against my abs and pushes herself up so that she's not laying on my chest anymore. "Alex, I don't…" Her voice trails off like she lost her train of thought and she shakes her head. I think I've been around Jo long enough to notice some of the actions that give away when she's getting angry, and I feel some relief wash over me when neither her tone nor her body language indicate that she's even the slightest bit mad at me. I'm not afraid of Jo, nor am I hesitant to speak my mind to her even when I know that something I say might piss her off, but it sure does help that she doesn't seem mad. I wouldn't care if she was mad—I would still tell her why I feel like she should quit—but I'm glad that this doesn't seem to be heading for an argument; at least not yet. "I'm not having this conversation right now, alright? Not right now." She sighs and puts her head back down on my chest. "Let's just go sleep." I sigh too and just wrap my arms around her. Clearly I can't make her talk about it if she doesn't want to talk about it but I wish she would get a grip and talk about it anyway. I don't want her to think I'm asking her this just to be a vindictive dick; I think she needs to know that I have reasoning behind it. But if she doesn't want to talk about it then hey, what can I do? She drapes her arm across me and I feel her eyelashes flutter, which means that she's blinking. "…I can't just quit my job, Alex." She whispers in a very low monotone. "I can't just up and quit. The solution isn't that easy."

"You can though, Jo. I'll go in there with you tomorrow so you can talk to your manager. Go in there, hand them your nametag, tell them that you're not coming back and don't go back. I'm serious." I trace small circles across the skin on her forearm and inhale the scent of her hair that's resting against my bare chest. I've never been much of a hair kind of guy, but I love Jo's hair. I have a newfound love for it, I guess. Ever since last night when my fingers got tangled up in it while we were having sex doggystyle, I've had an appreciation for the hair on her head. She's got beautiful hair on her head and I'm in love with it. "If you're too nervous to quit yourself, let me. I'll go in there tomorrow and tell them you're not coming back." She doesn't say anything at all. "Look Jo…I'm never going to ask you for much and I'm never going to beg you for anything. But I'm begging you to do this. I'm begging you to go in there tomorrow and quit. Please quit."

"Alex, I CAN'T!" She raises her voice at me but it wasn't loud enough to actually be considered a yell. She was just putting emphasis on the "can't", I think. "You don't think I want to? You don't think that crossed my mind today? After the kind of day I had at work, you really don't think I thought about quitting?" She sighs hard this time, annoyed. "I can't just quit and walk around unemployed. I have a house that I have to pay for. I may $180 in rent every month, my electricity bill is usually around $200, my water bill is usually $100, I pay $60 every two months for my garbage, $80 a month for my cable, $30 for my cell phone, $275 for car insurance, $396 for my car note, plus gas and groceries in my house. I have so many things I have to pay for Alex, and if I quit my job, how the hell am I going to do all of that? You tell me, because I'd sure as hell like to know how I can pay $1400 every month to live on my own without a job." She added that pretty quickly; I was surprised at first but then I remembered that she has a degree in math. She really is good at math. "I can't just walk around unemployed. I'm trying to get into one of the schools around here but I can't make anyone hire me. There's no other place for me to work. I was lucky to have gotten hired at the Hut. I don't think you know how many jobs I looked for and applied for when I first got here." It sounds like she might start crying, so I start stroking her hair. "I don't like walking around begging for jobs…it makes me feel lousy."

"There are a bunch of other jobs for you…and who says you have to stay here in Millerton? You have a car now, Jo. There are so many jobs up there in Pensacola…teaching jobs, too. You know how many schools are up in Pensacola? Some of them are bound to be hiring. I just don't want to see you limit yourself to just working at some small town restaurant when you're so much more than a waitress. You have two Ivy League degrees and you're waiting tables. You don't see anything wrong with that?" I put my cheek against the top of her head. "Stop limiting yourself. You have to see something wrong with a girl that's smart enough to get two Ivy League degrees but she's waiting tables. You see something wrong with that, don't you?"

"I do, but…Alex, it's really not that easy for me to get hired when jobs do background checks and see that I have a reckless endangerment charge on me. I got lucky and they didn't slap me with the DUI or the homicide charge but they did stick a reckless endangerment charge. And you know how schools are. You can't get into a school if you have so much as a parking ticket. I applied for a bunch and if I can't get hired in schools around Millerton, what makes you think I'm going to be able to go up to Pensacola and get hired? You make it sound so easy when it's really not. I don't have any other choices right now. I have to work in places that'll hire me with my record…and unfortunately, that seems like only fast food places don't care." She really sounds like she might be crying. "The Lobster Hut isn't much and it sucks, but…It's better than McDonald's."

"Then I'll pay to have your record expunged…it's not like you deserve to have that charge on there anyway." I shrug my shoulders. She lifts her head up and looks at me like I'm stupid. "You don't. You don't deserve to have that charge holding you back." She shakes her head and puts it back against my chest, which makes me suck my teeth out of annoyance. She thinks I'm trying to make this sound easier than what it actually is when in reality, she's making it sound harder than it actually is. Everything has a solution. If she's worried about someone looking at her record, I'll get it expunged. If she's worried about how she's going to pay for everything while she's out of a job, then I'll pay for her entire house until she gets back on her feet. If she doesn't want to depend on me for money like I suspect she won't, then I'll talk to my dad and see if he'll let her do some bookkeeping for the shop for some money. If she doesn't want me to pull strings and help her out with getting a job, then she can move in with me. There are so many solutions that she just doesn't want to see. "I'm serious, Jo. If you really think that having that charge on your record will hinder you from becoming a teacher, I will pay whatever I need to pay to have your record expunged. I'll do whatever I need to do to help you, as long as it means you don't have to go back to that restaurant to work. Tell me you'll quit tomorrow and I'll go get the money first thing in the morning to get your record taken care of."

"I can't promise you that I'm going to quit tomorrow." I feel her breath against my chest with every word she says. I suck my teeth once again and she shrugs, letting me know that she doesn't care how annoyed with her I am. "How irresponsible would that make me? Alex, if I quit my job tomorrow without another job lined up, how irresponsible is that? You're making it seem like getting my damn record clean is going to take one day and actually finding a job and getting hired for that job is going to take a day too. Things take time. How am I supposed to support myself in the meantime? You're being the stupid one now. You're making it sound like I can snap my fingers and magically have all my bills paid if I don't have a job. You know how much money I made today, despite everything that happened? Despite everything that happened, I walked out of there today with $503 in my pocket. I've never made that kind of money waitressing before. You know what I did when I got home?" My chest is a little bit wet, which lets me know that she _is_ crying. "I called my mom and told her that she didn't have to make my car payment for me this month. You know how good that felt?" She's silent again. "After she put money down at the dealer to make sure that I can drive off the lot with not only a car, but a brand new car…I could call her and tell her that I could afford to make a payment on it." I feel her jaw trembling but she stops it soon after it starts. "I'm not ready to give that up over a few guys taunting me." She sniffs. "Not when I don't have another way to be able to tell her the same thing next month."

"…So move in with me." I mumble underneath my breath because in a sense, it slipped out and I'm still not sure if I wanted to say that. I wanted to suggest it sometime during this conversation but I'm not exactly sure if this was the right time. "I-I mean…" I try to retract it but it's too late. I already said that and I already felt her breathing change when I did. "You could. Not only until you find another job, but in general. You could just give up the house. That would cut back on all your bills and stuff. You heard Lyla earlier too. She did say that you were home… but you weren't. But you could be." I'm so horrible with words it's not even funny. I'm terrible with words. "I don't know, Jo…I'm just saying. I just don't want you to go back there."

"Not everything has a solution, Alex! Stop trying to solve everything! I can't just up and quit my job, I can't move in with you because you want me to up and quit my job, I can't let you pay to get my record expunged. I had a bad day at work. I had a real bad day. But I LIKE the way things are right now!" She lifts her head up off my chest and looks at me with tears running down her cheeks. I've had enough of seeing Jo cry for one day. Seeing her cry always makes my heart hurt and I've had enough heartache for one day, I do believe. "I LIKE my life. For once, Alex…I like it. I like where I live, I like having a job to support myself for once, I like having you in my life, I like having Lyla…I'm finally at a place where I can be happy for once and that's not dependent upon a man. I pay my own bills here. I don't depend on my husband's money to get by, I live in a shitty house but it's MY shitty house, I have a boyfriend that I really love and I have…I have a _daughter_ that I adore. I made myself happy all on my own, with very, very little help from you and I'm happy with that. I love having you around but I made the decision to make myself happy with you. For once, I'm not dependent upon a man to make me happy and I'm not…" She shakes her head, rattling tears off her cheeks. "It was a bad day at work. Every time you have bad days, do I make it a point to convince you to quit? It was just a bad day."

"HOW ABOUT ME THOUGH, JO?!" I sit up, completely knocking her off my chest. I'm so sick of hearing about what she wants. Of course what she wants is very important to me and I respect what she wants but she needs to see my side of this too. I'm fed up hearing her little sob story. "You're not going back to your job. Now I'll go in there tomorrow myself and tell them that you quit—I don't give a damn. I'll do it myself if that's what it takes. But YOU are NOT going back." She wrinkles both her brows and juts her head backward, clearly angry with me but I don't care. "I'm trying to give you the decision here, but you're not making the right one. I'm sitting here and sitting here and just waiting for you to find the sense in your pretty little head—you know, the sense that got you into Harvard and Princeton?! But I'm done with it, Jo! You can't decide, so I'm deciding for you. You're not making the right decision, you're making SHIT decisions so now, I DECIDE. And I decide that you're not going back to that job. I'll find you a new one, I don't care. You can work at my dad's shop until something else opens up for you. I'll find something. But you no longer work at the Lobster Hut. Do you understand that?!"

"Fuck you, Alex. You don't tell me shit, how dare you tell me—"

"ENOUGH. ABOUT. YOU!" I grab her shoulders and hold her still. I'm about to burst into tears over this woman. She's not understanding anything from my point of view. All she's thinking about is herself and about all the things that affect her live but she's not even thinking about me. I matter here too, don't I? She's my girlfriend…I should matter to her. "What about me, Jo? Huh?!" When she sees the tears collecting on the rims of my eyes, I notice that her face starts to soften. "Did you think about how I felt when the girl that I love came calling me because she was too scared to continue on with her job? You told me they were making plans to rape you...and what if they had? What if I was at work or something and I couldn't have gotten to my phone in time to catch your phone call? Did you think about how lucky we both were that things so happened to work out in our favors today? I just so happened to be in the car at that time, I just so happened to catch your phone call and I just so happen to not be working right now. But what if everything didn't align so perfectly today? Those men wanted you, Jo. They wanted you and if by some chance I couldn't have gotten to my phone today, I would probably be at the morgue right now, identifying your body because those sickos did exactly what they wanted to do to you. You're not thinking about everything that could've been done to you today. What if they went through with what they planned to do to you? Then what?" She looks down at the sheets on her bed. "Exactly! So you don't get to make a decision here. Not when it comes to your safety. You're sitting here telling me about all the things that you had to overcome in moving here, but me too Jo…me too. I had to overcome a lot too. How about the fact that the only woman I ever loved in my life died on me? And what kind of man would I be if I put the woman I CURRENTLY love back in the position to face death like that again? Who's to say that those men won't come back? Who's to say they won't be waiting for you next time you work? I can't let you go back to that. I can't have you dying on me too, Jo…I can't handle that. I'll lose the little bit of sanity I have left if I lose you. If I lose you Jo, I'll be losing my BEST friend, my rock, my biggest supporter and the love of my life. I can't do that again. So I'm sorry but you're not going back to that job. I can't let you do that. I wouldn't be a good man if I let you go back. I have to put my foot down. I can't lose you. Do you know how that made me feel today? When you were too upset to even speak to me on the phone? When you were too scared to do your work because other men were making threats toward you? And I'm your boyfriend…I'm supposed to be the one to shut that shit down." I pinch the bridge of my nose and bite down on my bottom lip to keep the tears in my eyes. "And I couldn't. I couldn't even take you out of the position where you felt unsafe. Now you tell me how I'm supposed to let you go back? How am I supposed to do that? I don't want to have to worry about you every time you go back to work now and I'm telling you, that's what's going to happen. Every time you're at work, I'm going to worry myself sick. So if you don't quit for you…quit for me. I told you, I'm never going to ask you for much in this relationship. And I'm never going to beg you for anything. But I'm begging you for this. Please…"

She scoots towards me in the bed and puts her arms around my chest. Without a word, she forces my head on her chest and starts to scratch at my back. "…I didn't think about you. I'm sorry." One of her hands scratches my back and the other scratches my scalp. "I didn't think about how you felt…and I should've, because I remember how messed up I was when you came home after Stacy hit you. I was pissed and I felt hopeless when she hit you. I felt like you should've been safer at your own job but you weren't. So I can only imagine how you feel about this situation. I didn't think about you at all." She sighs and cradles my face against her chest. "But what do you want me to do? You want me to quit, okay. I will. But what about after that? You gotta have a plan for me…I need a plan. What do you want me to do after I quit?"

"Whatever you want to do, Jo. The door is always open for you to move in with me, so if you want to move in with me, of course you can. But if you want to keep your independence and keep your own house, that's fine too. Whatever you need paid, just tell me. I'll make sure you keep your house. I don't…I don't want to brag Jo, but $1400 a month is nothing to me. I can pay that. I can give you $1400 a month and let you spend it on everything you need to spend it on. And in the meantime, we'll look for another job for you. You don't have to worry about anything that you've been worrying about. You should already know that I'm not going to let you struggle. If I have it, you have it. I'm not going to let you struggle when I have money. I know you don't want to depend on me…but we can make it work somehow."

"Do you really think we're ready to move in with each other? I mean really, Alex? Do you think we're ready for that?" She loosens her grip around my body and looks dead in my eyes. "We're still working out some kinks. We had our first argument just yesterday…we're still working through a lot of our issues. Do you really think we're ready to take that step further and move in?" I have to think about that. I think we are. She's always over my house anyway. She's always over my house, we're always together, she's always around, we always sleep together…I think we could live together. I suppose it wouldn't be much different than our relationship already is. "I'm not saying that we're not." She starts to elaborate more. "I'm not saying that we're not ready to move in with each other. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just asking if you think we're ready. I'm asking what you think."

"How much more different could it be than this? Face it Jo, the only thing you do here is shower and even that is sometimes. You hardly ever sleep here, you don't eat here…you're basically paying the bills for a house that you barely live in. You're always down at my house. And for once, I don't have to ask Lyla how she'd feel about it because I already know how she'd feel. Us living together couldn't be much different than this."

"…I guess you have a point."

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"I don't blame you. I'd quit after a night like that too." Lucille steps back away from hugging me and runs her fingers through my hair. "I just wish you would've at least put in your two weeks so we could properly throw you a goodbye party." She looks at me like she really is sad to see me go. "But you've gotta get outta here while you can. You're too good for this place, Jo. We're gonna miss you…but you're one of the ones that are too good for this place." I'm really going to miss working here too. I'm not going to miss the long nights of waiting tables or the drunk men hitting on me, but I'm really going to miss my friends. I'll still come in here to visit them of course but it's not going to be the same knowing that I don't work with them anymore. I'll make it a point to come in here and have dinner every now and again so I can visit them though. "You guys are all leaving me." Lucille pokes her lip out. "Kaylee's going back to college at the end of this month, Luke's gotta go back to school too, to finish up his degree, Macy's moving to Portwood with that boyfriend of hers and you're quitting on me."

It took me half an hour to convince Alex to let me come in here on my own. He wanted to come in here with me so he could have a chat with Tony and tell him how much he didn't appreciate having his girlfriend stuck behind a bar by herself. Something told me that if I had let Alex come in here with me to have just a little "chat" with Tony, Tony might've ended up physically injured. So after half an hour, I finally convinced him to let me come in here alone. I handled it professionally, I believe. I came in through the front and at first, I said hi to everyone. They had already heard about what happened but I gave them the official story and I told them what I was here for. When Tony came out of the back, I asked him if I could come back and speak to him and he told me that I could. I went back there, I handed him my nametag and I told him that I had to let him know that I was quitting. He told me that he understood why and he told me that he was sorry for what happened to me yesterday and he told me that he played back the tape from last night and what happened to me was "inexcusable" and "demeaning". He asked me if I had planned on filing harassment charges against the men and I said no because I didn't know their names. He said that he was sad to see me go but he firmly understood why I was quitting and he told me that I can have a job with them in the future if I would like to. And that was the end of it.

"I'll still be working here when I'm home for the summer." Kaylee finishes shoving napkins into the napkin holders and comes over to where Lucille and I are standing. "So I'll be back next summer and I think I'll pick up a couple shifts when I'm home for winter break." She gently shoves past Lucille and holds her arms out for a hug too. "I'm gonna miss you too, Jo. I loved working with you." I hug her back and fight off tears. I didn't think saying goodbye to all my friends was going to be this hard. I swear quitting today would've been a hell of a lot easier if everyone wasn't so sad to see me go. Even Austin told me that he'd miss me and I never really even talked to him much. My coworkers were awesome. They made this place bearable…even when it wasn't. "You have my number though. Text me sometime. I'll text you when I'm home on my breaks and stuff. We can come here and catch up."

"That sounds good." I'm not sad about quitting because I could truly give a rat's ass about this place but I am sad about leaving my friends. They were the first friends I made here—aside from Lyla, that is. But Alex thinks I should quit and although I admit that at first, I thought he wanted me to quit for his own personal selfish reasons, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he has valid points. I can't work in a place where I was threatened to be raped. Those men know where I work and if they still decide that they want me, it's a whole lot easier for them to have me if they know where I'm working. When he broke it down and really explained it to me last night, it was easy for me to see his point. I didn't really think about how the situation yesterday affected him. I needed to quit this job. "I'm gonna miss you guys so much though." I move to the side so I can give Macy a hug.

"We'll miss you like hell Jo, but you have to get outta here." Macy rubs my back and lets me go so she can spit some words of wisdom to me. Aside from Lucille, Macy's the easiest of my coworkers to listen to. "If you ask me, Tony should be fired for thinking that it was a good idea to stick you behind the bar alone yesterday. That was a dick move and he should've known better. That's why he was kissing your ass when you handed him your badge earlier. He doesn't want you to hit the restaurant with a big ass lawsuit, even though you should. I mean who in their right mind would stick a pretty young girl behind a bar by herself, knowing what kind of drunken assholes come in here on a day to day basis? It's like he wanted you to get raped. He was kissing your ass so hard when you handed him your nametag. If it were any of us telling him that we quit, he'd tell us good riddance and probably fire us instead for not giving him our two weeks' notice. He knows he fucked up yesterday."

"Yeah, I know. Total asshole move. You should sue the shit out of this place, shut it down and turn it into a gay bar." Luke puts his tray down and wraps his arms around my waist. "I'm gonna miss you so much, boopy." I smile. I think I'll probably miss Luke the most. He always has me in tears from laughing so hard. He doesn't even try to be funny all the time and I'm gonna miss that about him. He's hilarious. "And sorry I couldn't help you out back there yesterday. If I knew that they were saying shit to you, I would've helped. But you know…Asshole wants to send people home and leave me and you to fend for ourselves. I was busy as hell out there on the patio yesterday but if you would've told me what those fuckers were saying to you, I would've came in here and switched with you."

"It's okay Lukey, it wasn't your fault." I put my lips against his cheek and smack his butt. "Be good. I'm not going to be around to drag your ass out of trouble anymore, so be more careful. No more flirting with straight guys or guys that are married…I won't be here to act like your cover-up so nobody kicks your ass anymore." I giggle, referring to the two times when he hit on a straight guy and a gay guy that was married. He hit on a straight guy and the guy was so disturbed that he wanted to get up and leave but instead, I walked over, kissed Luke's cheek and told him that I'd "see him at home" so that the "nice haircut" compliment Luke gave the guy seemed like a genuine compliment as opposed to an actual pickup line. I had to pull the same thing when he hit on a guy that was married once too. The guy's husband was about to get up and kick Luke's ass but I swooped in and acted like I was his girlfriend again. "I have to go…Alex is outside in the car waiting…and we have lots of things we have to do today. He has to go up to his job for something and then we're going to the mall…we're busy. I just came in here to quit…and say goodbye to you guys." I sigh. "I'll see you guys around." I go down the line and give them all one last hug before I turn towards the door to leave.

"Bye, Jo." They all say to me in unison, which makes me want to cry again.

"TAKE CARE OF THAT SEXY ASS MAN OF YOURS!" Kaylee screams at me, which makes me laugh so hard that I forget to cry.

 **X X X**

"Yeah, you can just resume putting me on the schedule as normal." The last time I was here was when Lyla had to have her surgery and while that wasn't so long ago, I still managed to forget how magical this place is. I still can't believe Alex gets to call this place his job. Each hallway of this place is themed after a different animal and the hallway we're currently standing in is alligators and crocodile themed. Almost every wall and window pane is green, there are pictures of crocodiles and alligators hanging up all over the place and the station where all the nurses gather around at is conveniently called "The Swamp." On the front wall of the little station are hand-painted cattail flowers and the words "The Swamp" are painted across it to look like mud. It's a pretty neat place to work, I think. "I might have to call off on the 27th though. I think that's when the court hearing is. Don't quote me on that, because it's subject to change but I'm just trying to let you know ahead of time." As Alex talks to Arizona about starting to work again, I wander around a little bit just to look. They do a very nice job at disguising the fact that this is a hospital. If I were a kid again, I would be praying for my appendix to burst or for my tonsils to swell up just so I could come here. Alex has the coolest job. He gets to hang out with sick kids all day and get paid to make them feel better. That's awesome. "Yeah, that's fine…tomorrow works."

He also has the world's coolest boss. There aren't a lot of bosses in this world that would let one of their employees take an extended period of time off from work and still have his job waiting for him. I don't think Alex realizes just how lucky he is to have the kind of job that he does. "Alright, so 7-3 tomorrow, off Wednesday, 3-11 Thursday…that's all I'm going to give you for this week. But 3-11s will be okay after Wednesday, right? Since your visitation is getting cleared on Wednesday?" While I look around, I also listen in on their conversations to hear what Alex's work schedule is going to be like. I'm glad he's going back to work after being out of commission for so long to deal with Lyla being taken away, but it's starting to sound like I'm going to be moving in on my own. We're going to start moving my stuff a little later on tonight and I'm trying to be all settled in by Thursday so I can start job hunting ASAP but it sounds like he's going to be working 3-11 on Thursday, which means it's going to be up to me to get myself settled in. I don't think either one of us realized that moving me into his house was going to be a bit more than we bargained for until we started discussing what we're going to do with my furniture on the way here. So far, we've decided that we're going to leave my couch since it's a gross, nasty, smelly secondhand couch anyway. The couch is just going to stay in the house for the next owner that wants it. My coffee table is going to go upstairs in his attic for safekeeping, my kitchen table and chairs are going to go outside on his patio since his current patio set is wooden and gross. We're going to use my bathroom set to redecorate his downstairs bathroom. And he decided that we're going to nix his mattress and keep my air one. I tried negotiating with him on that but he said that he didn't really feel right moving his girlfriend in to sleep in the same bed he shared with his now dead wife and I could understand that. I turned my cable services off this morning and my brand new TV is going to go up in his bedroom. He's going to move the TV from his bedroom down to the living room, the TV from his living room into the attic since it's older and my TV is going to be in our bedroom now. I think we have everything figured out so far. "While I've got you here, I could really use you for a consult. It'll only take a minute." After they work out his schedule, Arizona starts talking to him about actual work.

"Alright…can Jo come? I don't want to leave her out here by herself." I pretend to be very busy looking at the crocodile pictures while Alex asks his boss if I could tag along. I don't really mind being left out here alone but if I speak up and tell him that, he's going to know I was eavesdropping on his conversation. I hear Arizona tell him "of course" and that's when Alex walks over to me. "Come on…I'm gonna go help Arizona with a consult. You can come with me." He holds his hand out for me to hold it. I lock my fingers inside his and let him drag me to whatever hallway he wants. I look around as the green hallway transforms into a pink one and instead of pigs like I was expecting, this theme is actually flamingoes. I actually remember being in this hallway when Lyla got her surgery. "Gimme a brief rundown. What's up with the kid?"

"Three day old newbie with what looks like continuous seizure activity in his left leg and arm. I can't admit him into the NICU without a parent's consent since he's not a preemie and not in any apparent life-threatening condition…and his mom's up at Pensacola Presbyterian being treated for car crash injuries so I don't have a parent's consent. Father is nowhere to be found. He was life-threatening enough to be airlifted here on Saturday but now he's not life-threatening enough to be admitted to the NICU and he's not well enough to be transported back to Pensacola Pres. I'm at a loss for his treatment here. I had Shepherd run some tests on his brain to see if he can pinpoint what exactly is causing the seizures but we're all stumped here." Arizona rattles off the story of the patient like she's reading from a book. When she comes to a bright pink wooden door, she stops. "And there isn't many exploratory procedures I can do on him without a parent's consent. I want to do an exploratory laparotomy, an exploratory MRI, a CT…But I can't do any of that without consent." I don't know anything that she's talking about but Alex understands everything and I find that amazing for some reason. Arizona sticks her name badge into a lock next to the door and when it buzzes, she opens the door up.

"When you ran his labs, did you check for an elevated WBC count? Have you ruled out epilepsy? Give him a CC of Depakote?" Alex walks into the room and I walk in behind him. As soon as we walk into the room, I can hear very weak cries coming from the plastic cradle that the baby is in and it kind of breaks my heart. It sounds like the baby's crying in pain and that's so sad if it is. I stand in the back of the room and watch Alex do what he's trained to do. I find it so amazing that he just knows what he's doing. I always knew he was a doctor but the whole concept is becoming so real to me while I actually watch him in action. "And I'm guessing a pacifier wouldn't work if the left half of his body is seizing…probably can't suck on it much anyway." The baby's crying doesn't seem to bother either one of them. "Gimme a name, Zone."

"Brayden Cruz." Arizona puts down the flat screen tablet she was holding and hovers over the baby, standing next to Alex. "His WBC count is within normal range, epileptic tests came back negative and Depakote doesn't seem to work. Depakote worked when we first gave it to him but it seemed to have worn off within ten minutes and we can't keep giving a newborn Depakote intravenously. Shepherd found no abnormal brain activity when he did his neurological study but without a CT, we can't rule out anything for good and he's been seizing nonstop for three days…I wouldn't be surprised if there were some neurological deficits by now." She puts her hand against the baby's stomach. "Poor guy hasn't stopped crying either so I'm guessing he's in some degree of pain."

"I think your best bet is to petition the board for exploratory procedures without consent. He keeps seizing like this and he'll be dead before he even celebrates one week of life. I can't say anything for certain without a CT to analyze. I'm thinking there might be blockages in his carotids that are preventing the right side of his brain from getting enough blood flow, causing his left side to seize, I'm thinking minute epilepsy, maybe a murmur…can't tell for sure without any tests and if you wait any longer, he's going to die." That's so sad. I feel my heart sink a little bit. This poor baby's going to die because they can't treat him right without his mom's signature? That's so sad. He's so little. He's probably never been held and cuddled by his mommy, he's probably never even nurtured and coddled. That's so sad. "You gotta do procedures without consent. That's the only solution I can think of. You gotta find out what exactly is causing these seizures. I'll run his tests myself tomorrow if you get the board's approval tonight."

"I'll get right on that. I was thinking that for a course of action too but it's better to hear it come from you too." Arizona taps Alex's shoulder and sighs. "Just wish there was something I could do right now, you know?" Alex nods his head. "…You and Jo should probably go now. Enjoy the rest of your day. You'll be back here soon enough tomorrow." Somehow, she still manages to sound bright and happy and I have to say that she's talented for that.

"Yeah, you're right…come on Jo." Alex turns around and faces me, sullen look clear on his face. When Alex turns around, he moves to the side slightly and I can finally get a good look at the little guy. He has a very thin, white, long-sleeved t-shirt on that's rising up around his belly enough to show that his umbilical cord stump clip is still intact. He has on a white diaper with yellow straps. His skin is a very tan, golden, Hispanic kind of color and he has a lot of hair on top of his head. His eyes are closed but his mouth is wide open enough for him to be screaming, despite the tube up his nose. I've never seen a baby's foot shake so fast. It looks like…like if you were to scratch a dog's belly really fast and it's foot started to kick. You can tell it's involuntary, the dog doesn't make a big deal out of it and the foot is shaking so fast. It looks like this baby's foot is moving a million miles a minute. "What?" Alex asks me, which makes Arizona turn around and look at me too. I tilt my head and poke my lip out. This is the saddest thing I've ever seen. "Oh yeah, I forgot. Jo's a sucker for babies, Arizona." Alex makes me sound like I'm nothing but a softie but seriously…this is so sad. "You should've saw her with Lyla's timeout yesterday…she's a sucker for kids."

"I just want to hold him…he's probably never been held before. He might die and he was never even held and cuddled and kissed by his mommy. That would suck…to die before you got to lay on your mommy's chest." I explain myself. "Get me outta here, Alex. Why would you bring me here? This is so sad. I would've rather have waited in the hall." I look at him with my lip still poked out. "I just wanna hold him. Poor baby."

"…Here." Arizona pushes two buttons on each side of the cradle he's in and lowers the side of it. "Don't tell anybody I'm letting you do this, but here." She's very gentle with the way she lifts the baby up out of the cradle. "You said you want to hold him." She turns to me, offering me the tiny infant's body. I drop my jaw. "You have to come over here though. His wires won't stretch that far." I blankly nod my head and walk over to her. "Here, I'll show you how…head goes..." She puts the baby in my arms and I already adjust. I make sure his head is in the bend of my arm for support, make sure his body is secure against mine and support his weight with my other arm. "…Or you can just not listen to me and hold him like you already know how." Arizona shakes her head at me. "Do you have kids, Jo?" I shake my head, too focused on the little baby in my arms to open my mouth.

In my arms, the baby starts shaking again but to my surprise, the shaking isn't as violent as it looked like he was laying down. It's more of a gentle shiver, now that I'm holding him. He opens his mouth again and starts wailing his little pain-induced cry. "Shhh…I know, I know." I gently bounce him up and down in my arm and stare down at him. He's trying to flail his arms and move his head while he cries but I squeeze him closer to my chest to prevent that from happening. "I know, sweetheart…I know. It hurts." I slip my pinky into the palm of his hand and sway back and forth. He squeezes my finger hard and continues to cry. "It's alright. Shh…yeah, it's alright." A little green pacifier catches my eye and I pick it up off his bed. "Here we go…how's about this?" I nudge it in between his precious little gums. "You can't sucks on this though…" My voice is all babyish and goofy. I probably sound like a nutcase. "Nope. You can't sucks on this if your body's shakin' now can you?" I slip my index finger into the little hole of the pacifier and hold it in his mouth like that. "Say all's I needed is someone to hold it for me. Cause I can't." As soon as I hold the pacifier in his mouth, he starts sucking on it and quiets down. His body starts shaking again but the pacifier stays in since I'm holding it. "See? All betters." He actually opens up his little eyes. "Hi!" My finger is bobbing up and down with his sucks. "Say who is this strange woman holding me…" I start patting his butt. He blinks his eyes and keeps sucking. "Yeps… I'm gonna have to put you down now. Nope. I probably won't ever see you again but I'm glad I can give ya a couple minutes of relief there, honey." I smile at him. He's so little and precious. "…Someone get this baby off me." I finally fix my voice.

"You really don't have kids? You're not a mother?" Like I asked her to, Arizona starts to lift the baby out of my arms, replacing my finger in the pacifier with her own.

"Nope." I relinquish the baby to her. I glance at Alex from the corner of my eye, only to find that he's staring at me. "I'm not a mommy…no babies for me." I give the little boy's hair one last stroke before I step away. I'm glad she took that baby off of me when she did because I was starting to get that "my womb will always be empty" sadness thing going on. I wish I could have babies. One ovary could get me pregnant but the doctors said it probably won't and even if I do, I'll lose it because they had to take a piece of my cervix too. A small piece of it, but a piece nonetheless. And I can't push a baby out with metal in my pelvis. So no babies for me. I would thoroughly enjoy one though. I sigh and turn to Alex. "You ready?" He finally stops staring at me and when he comes out of the comatose state he was in while staring at me, he nods his head. "Mall next, right?"

"Yep…school clothes for Lyla." He opens the door for me. Ooh, shopping. I don't think he realizes how bad an idea taking me shopping for Lyla is. He should've gone shopping by himself because taking me with him…he's going to go broke. I'm picking her up some bows, dresses, skirts, cute shoes, SEQUINS, RHINESTONES…ugh. I always wanted a little girl that I could dress up and treat like a Barbie doll. I can't wait for preschool to start! She's going to be the best dressed kid in her class. I swear, with me living with Alex now, I'm going to get up every morning and put matching bows in her hair, make sure her clothes are all coordinated, make sure her shoes match…UGH. I'm excited now!

I knew a little retail therapy would cheer me up.

* * *

 **A/N:** Important concepts and ideas in this chapter guys, but time jump to the court hearing next chapter :)


	55. Sustained

After I effortlessly slide my car into the only available parking spot in the lot, I throw my gearshift in park and twist my keys so my car's engine switches off. But before I even make a move to get out of the car, I take a moment to calm myself down. I won't sit here and put up a front…I'll admit that I'm nervous as hell to walk in here today. In the days leading up to this, I've been talking to my lawyer at least once a day and in a sense, I do feel prepared and I am pretty confident as to what the outcome is going to be, I'm still nervous because I know that anything can happen in here today. I've been busying myself with gathering up my own arguments to present at this hearing today but I'd be a fool to believe that my mother hasn't been speaking to a lawyer of her own. Without a doubt, she's hired a lawyer too and they've been working on their own case. They've been working on their own case, been coming up with their own arguments and I can honestly say that I have no idea what they're going to throw at me while I'm in here today. I don't know if new accusations are going to be thrown my way, I don't know if they're going to try and make me seem like this horrible person and ultimately, I don't know what the judge is going to decide. I have a pretty good inkling that he or she is going to give me my daughter back once and for all but like I just said…anything in this world could happen in that courtroom today. All I know is that my lawyer and I are going to focus on the facts and work our case in the best interest of Lyla.

"Hey…" She rests her hand on the blade of my shoulder and gives it a very gentle, loving caress. "You okay?" She completely turns her body so that she's facing me and gives me her full, undivided attention like she's been doing throughout this whole entire ordeal. Off the record, I feel a sense of liberation in a way. After today, hopefully this entire nightmare will be over and we'll be able to put everything behind us. I can go back to living my life with my daughter and we can start adjusting to life as a three person family and Jo can finally stop carrying the weight of my world on her very tiny shoulders. She's been my rock throughout this whole entire ordeal and although she's been strong, tough and really sturdy for me, I can tell that it's been taking a toll on her. After today though…I can start being a better man. I can start making it up to her and this relationship can finally stop being about me. In a few hours, this will all be over. "It's gonna be alright…okay?" She taps my shoulder. "We should go in…you don't wanna be late."

She's right. Although the hearing doesn't start until 10:00, my lawyer told me to meet him here at the courthouse at 9:30 so we can discuss a couple more things before we go and sit before the judge. Once again, before I get out of the car, I have to take a moment. But this time, I take the moment to lean across the seats to kiss her. I tilt my head to the side so we don't bump noses, close my eyes and press my lips right against hers. It's small, chaste and it's not some grand gesture, put it's a gesture nonetheless and I just want her to know how much I appreciate having her here for me. Ever since he said them, my dad's words have been ringing in my head and I've been holding onto them. My issues are not Jo's issues. She's not my wife and it's not like she has a legal or moral obligation to be my support system. She's been supporting me on her own free will and that speaks to the kind of person she is, I truly believe. In realizing that she doesn't have to support me as much as she's been, I have nothing but the utmost admiration and respect for Jo and I swear to myself that someday, I will make it up to her. When we pull out of the kiss, she strokes my cheek and wipes my mouth with her thumb. "…Lipstick?" I ask. Jo never rubs my lips after a kiss so I know when she does it, I must have something on them. Smiling softly, she nods her head and takes her hand away from my face.

She looks beautiful today, if I do say so myself. My lawyer told me to tell her that it would be a good idea if she dressed nicely today too because if things go south in this courtroom for me, he's going to throw all his resources towards getting Jo custody of Lyla and it would work best if she appeared as the likable girlfriend as opposed to a bum. When we woke up this morning, I thought that Jo would've interpreted "look nice" as a pair of jeans and a nice blouse but no. She took "look nice" seriously and she looks absolutely breathtaking. I didn't see her outfit when she picked it out last night because somehow I managed to fall asleep before her; which never happens, but it did. I had a long day at work yesterday so I'm guessing that's probably why I passed out the way I did last night. Anyway, she put on a light beige pencil skirt, a lacy white tank top with a beige jacket over it. She even put on a pair of white high heels and instead of wearing her hair down like she usually does, she parted her hair to the side and tied it back in a very sleek ponytail. She put on some makeup and bright red lipstick and I always knew that my girlfriend was a knockout, but she seriously looks like she stepped out of a magazine right now. When I saw her come out of the bathroom this morning, I had to do a double take. She doesn't usually dress up like this. Jo usually has a very nonchalant, tomboyish way about her clothes and it was kind of amazing to see her break away from that and embrace the beautiful, girly side of herself. She's absolutely gorgeous.

"Well here goes nothing, right?" I mumble and she nods her head. At the same time, we both start to get out of the car. After I shut my door and lock my car up, I take the moment to look around at the parking lot. It's pretty much packed to maximum capacity. Cars are all over the place and I'm starting to wonder just how many more hearings are here today. It's kind of comforting to know that all of the hearings might not be for custody, being that this courthouse isn't just a family one. Since it's a megaplex courthouse, it can be used for family disputes, probation hearings, felonies and misdemeanors. So maybe these people aren't all here for custody hearings and maybe it won't take as long for me to be seen as I think it's going to take. Or I could be totally wrong and every last one of these people are here for custody proceedings. I notice my dad's truck and a few more down the line, I notice my mom's car too. I sigh. There was a piece of me that was hoping she just wouldn't show up. Once Jo makes her way over to my side of the car, I put my hands in the pockets of my black suit pants and start walking towards the door.

I pull open the glass doors to the courthouse and hold them open for Jo. She walks right in past me and goes straight for the secretary's desk. Before we walk into the waiting room, we have to sign in and Jo's doing that for me. "Alexander Karev…we're here for the 10:00 hearing." Jo signs both our names on the sign in sheet and since the secretary is behind one of those glass screens with the little holes as a speaker, she doesn't say anything much to us. She just pushes the button to unlock the door and we both walk through the newly unlocked door. "It says family and domestic hearings are this way." Jo motions for me to follow her and so I do. I'm a little surprised when we don't have to walk far. The family and domestic unit is literally right around the corner. "Come here, before we go in there…" She stands in front of the door to prevent me from going in and I just slouch my shoulders and stand in front of her. "Everything is going to be fine." She starts fixing my suit collar. "You're gonna go in here and you're gonna answer anything they want you to answer…listen to whatever they have to say…and when we walk outta here, we're walking outta here with Lyla." She adjusts my tie, which she had to tie for me this morning anyway. "Everything is going to be just fine." She brushes my shoulders off and fixes my coat. "Gimme a kiss now." I lean down and peck her lips again. "Alright. Come on." She taps my butt and opens the door to the domestic and family court unit.

We both walk through the door at the same time and when I look around, I don't see anybody else. I know they're all here, because their cars are all outside in the parking lot but none of them are here. My lawyer is the only person sitting in the waiting room and when Jo and I walk through the door, he stands up. "Good to see you again, Alex." He rushes over to me and shakes my hand. I give him a polite, professional smirk and shake his hand too. "And you must be the girlfriend…I've heard about you." He shakes Jo's hand too and ever the professional, Jo smiles at him. "Robert Abrams."

"Jo Wilson….nice to finally make your acquaintance." Jo takes her hand away when they're done shaking and puts it against my shoulder.

"Alright, so everyone's here and we're just waiting on the judge to give us the 'okay' to come in." He takes his pen from behind his ear and opens up the very same notepad he had with him the first time we met. "I just want to give you some last minute pointers. We opted to separate you and your mother into different waiting areas, for obvious reasons but when we get into the courtroom, she will be sitting at her own table. She will be positioned to your left and slightly behind you. Do not look back at her, just look forward. Avoid eye contact. You're might to hear lots of big words in here but I'll explain them as we go. There will be a glass of water at your disposal. Just drink it sparingly if you get thirsty…we don't want to ask for recesses because you need to use the restroom. I'm not sure if they plan on bringing your daughter in for questioning but just in case they do, just remember to keep your head. The judge might view an emotional reaction as unprofessional and unlikable. If there's anything you want me to elaborate on during the proceedings, just let me know. You just sit back and let me do the talking, until the judge addresses you himself. They're going to put you on the stand, but only to ask you a few questions. I was informed this morning that they do not intend to put your mother on the stand, which is fine…you understand that she's not obligated to take the stand since she'd be considered the prosecutor." I nod my head. He's explained this to me before. "Just answer all of the questions truthfully and to the best of your capability. If there's something you don't know how to answer, put your hand up and I'll ask for them to reword it or I'll object to it entirely." He clears his throat. "They're going to read the results of the polygraph you took yesterday. I'm not allowed to disclose the results to you before legal proceedings start but this is me not telling you that you passed, alright?" I nod my head. I knew I'd pass. I was scared half to death yesterday when they hooked me up to that damn machine but I knew I'd pass. I didn't do anything wrong so there's no way in hell I wouldn't pass. "There are four seats at your table." He continues. "The order will go me, you'll sit on my left, next to you will be one of the social workers that came out and investigated the initial complaint and next to her, Jo will sit. I don't want her to sit next to you…that might invoke emotional responses and I don't want that. As for you…" He turns to Jo next and she lifts her head to listen to him. "If everything goes the way I plan for it to, you won't have to speak at all. I will only address you as Alex's alternate and the judge will understand what I mean by that. You don't have to say a word unless I call you to the stand and I probably won't but in case I do, just tell the truth to whatever they ask you. If you get up there, they WILL ask you about a couple things on the background check they issued for you but again, you don't have to speak on that. You can opt not to speak or you can explain about the charges, your choice. But like I said, I don't anticipate that happening. You're here as his alternate. Do you understand that?" Jo nods her head. "Alright. You two wait here. I'm going to go see if they're ready for us."

After giving me and Jo both a very brief rundown of what to do and expect in there, he closes his notepad, sticks his pen back behind his ear and walks towards a set of double doors off to our left. With the one moment we have alone, I look down at Jo. She looks up at me too and I can really tell that she's trying to hold it together. I don't think she likes the idea of being questioned about her background check in court. I put my hand on her back to offer her the best support I possibly can. "It's not going to come down to that. He's just trying to prepare you in case it does, but it's not. You're not the one that should be worried." I stroke her back. "If you break down…who the hell am I going to lean on? Now's not the time for you to break down on me here, Jo." I put my lips against her forehead and see her smile from the corner of my eye. We're still working on getting her record expunged so she still has a few charges on there but like I said, we're working on it. We've been focusing on getting her settled in to my house and on this court hearing lately. She hasn't been job hunting just yet but it's only been a week since she's quit so it's not like she's been out of work for some outrageous amount of time.

"…Ooh…he's cute." She turns her head and her eyes follow someone that just walked out of the courtroom and walked straight into the bathrooms, which are right next to the doors. I follow the guy with my eyes all the way into the bathroom too. He's kind of tall, slightly muscular and he has short dirty blonde hair and if I'm not mistaken, he had blue green eyes. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt with a band on it. "I wonder if he works here…he's a cutie." Jo cranes her neck towards the bathroom doors and tries to look some more even though the doors are clearly shut by now. I feel my face fall. My eyebrows wrinkle, my eyes squint and my lips droop to a grimace…and not because she's calling some other guy cute but because of _who_ she's calling cute. She looks up at me and catches my face all contorted. "What? He was a cutie…"

"…That's my brother, Jo." I mumble. Her jaw drops and at the same time, her lips look like they want to curl up into a smile. "Wanna reevaluate your choice of words?"

"Not really." She shrugs. "I guess it runs in the family. He looks like you…so you're both cute. How old is he?"

"22."

"Aw, damn…he's a baby." She seems shocked. "I'm serious. Your mom and your dad must've been studs back in the day because you Karevs…" She shakes her head. "Wow." Before the door to the bathroom opens back up for Aaron to come out so I can properly introduce him to Jo, the courtroom doors open and my lawyer sticks his head out. He nods his head "yes", which means Jo and I can come into the room now and that's when all sense of playfulness leaves both my body and Jo's body as well. Instead of joking and laughing about how cute my brother is, she grabs my hand and holds it. And together, we walk into the courtroom.

Here goes nothing…

 **X X X**

"Good morning." As soon as the judge sits down, everyone in the court room does too. "We are here today to determine the custody of Lyla Karev, a minor child residing in the town of Millerton, a coastal suburb of Pensacola." The judge is a very small, feeble elderly woman. I don't know if the fact that she's old makes me nervous or makes me feel better. She's older, which might mean that she'll side with my mother out of understanding but again, she's older which means that she's been doing this for a while and she knows what she's doing. I was pretty confident coming in here today but now, sitting here in this chair in front of an actual judge, I realize how this could seriously go either way. My palms are sweating like crazy. "In the case of Helen Karev vs. Alexander Karev. Representing Ms. Karev?" She slides glasses up on her face just as my mom's lawyer stands up.

"Evan Harris, your honor." Since I'm not allowed to look at my mom's table, I have to settle for just listening. "Mitch Baker, social services." I focus on the judge's long black robe to maintain my composure. I can't believe this all boiled down to this. Everything my mom accused me of…her coming to my house, everything…it all comes down to this. I think she was expecting me to lay down like a dog and let her take my kid. But I'm not going to let that happen. I will fight and fight and fight for Lyla until I have no fight left in me. Jo and the female social worker that came to my house to take Lyla away are sitting on my left and the last time I snuck a glance, my dad, Michelle, Amber and Aaron were all sitting behind me. I guess they wouldn't have Lyla in a courtroom but I haven't seen her since yesterday evening and I'm starting to wonder if she's even here. If she's not with my dad and not with Michelle then where could she even be?

"And representing Mr. Karev?" The judge turns her attention to my table next.

"Robert Abrams, your honor." My lawyer stands up. "And Rhonda Mason with social services." The social worker next to me stands up too but they sit back down fairly quickly. I put my attention back on the judge's robe and just listen.

"Mr. Harris, please present your case to me." She speaks slowly, articulately and rummages through papers at the same time.

My mom's lawyer stands up and walks with large, clunky steps to the front of the courtroom. "Good morning, Judge Mason." He starts. "I'm here today, representing Ms. Helen Karev, the paternal grandmother of the minor child. My client is looking to be awarded sole custody of the child. Your honor, my client and I first began speaking about two months ago and she contacted me with concerns about the safety and well-being of her granddaughter, a then three-year old female. The child was in the custody of her biological father, Alexander Karev, the biological son of my client. Over a two month span, my client and I began working on a case strong enough to file for sole custody. My client has good reason to believe the child is in danger while in the care of her father and good proof to support the fact that she would be better off in the care of her grandmother. Without further hesitation, I'd like to bring my first witness to the stand. Mitch Baker." Underneath the table, I cross my feet and try to remain still. I'm a bit antsy. The same male social worker that came to my house and took Lyla away from me walks up and sits down in a chair that's next to the judge's pedestal. "Please state your name and occupation for the record, Mr. Baker."

"Mitchell Baker…I work with Child Protective Services." He leans forward and speaks clearly into the microphone provided.

"And you were one of the workers called in to work on Ms. Karev's case, is that right?"

"Yes sir."

"Can you tell the court exactly what transpired between you and Ms. Karev? What sort of things did she feel the need to contact you for?" The lawyer walks back to the table and picks up a yellow envelope. He walks the envelope over and hands it the judge.

"We were called in on allegations of physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, malnutrition and exploitation. All of which we conducted a very thorough investigation of. My partner and I did a home visit to Mr. Karev's household, investigated and removed the child from the home." He explains.

"We provided photo proof in the folder of injuries the child sustained while in the care of Mr. Karev, your honor." The lawyer says. He walks back over to the CPS worker. "And when you went to the house to interview Mr. Karev, what did you find?"

"We found a clean home. No signs of clutter, dirt, mold. The environment seemed suitable for a child." He nods his head.

"What was the child doing at this time?"

"Eating supper and watching a movie. It was to my knowledge that she was recovering from a surgery she had the previous day, so she seemed lethargic and a bit drowsy."

"And what was the child eating?"

"Pizza and soda pop."

"No further questions, your honor." I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes. It was just PIZZA. And give me a break, you know how many kids drink soda a day?! Oh, this is off to a marvelous start.

"Mr. Abrams, please present your case." The judge is sifting through the pictures in the envelope and I know what she must be thinking. Those pictures look bad. I saw them when CPS came to my house and they look awful. Lyla's face is all bruised, she has marks on her butt…I'm a goner. I really think I lost this case. My lawyer gets up from his chair and walks toward the front of the courtroom too. He hands the judge a white folder and starts pacing. I'm really not feeling so good about this anymore.

"I'm here to represent Alexander Karev, the biological father and legal guardian of the child. My client is looking to maintain sole custody of his daughter, based off what is in her best interest. I would like to point out that all allegations against my client were unfounded once investigated by Child Protective Services. There are logical explanations behind every bump, bruise, nick and cut the child has ever received, and none of them involve my client being physically, mentally, verbally or sexually abusive toward his daughter. My client has been cleared of all allegations, proof provided in that folder right there. There is no legal reason why my client should not have custody of his child. I'd like to call my client to the stand, your honor." I take a sip of my water and slide out from my chair. Without even looking at my mother, I walk and sit in the same chair that the CPS worker was just sitting in. I wipe the palms of my hands on my pants and lean forward so I can speak into the microphone when the time comes. "State your name and relationship to the child, for the record Alex."

"Alex Karev…I'm her father." I feel like I'm about to lose it, so I look at Jo. She's looking back at me and she's holding my gaze and she makes it easier for me to relax.

"I'm just going to ask you the same set of questions CPS asked you and a little bit more." My lawyer starts pacing. I'm comfortable with this part. We rehearsed this part. "Have you ever spanked your daughter?"

"No."

"Ever hit her with excessive force?"

"No."

"Hit her at all?"

"No."

"Have you ever touched your daughter for your own sexual gratification?"

"No."

"Have you ever neglected to feed your daughter at any point in time?"

"No."

"Have you ever witnessed other men or women touch your child for sexual gratification and failed to contact authorities or bring attention to it?"

"No."

"These are all questions that my client answered on the polygraph exam he took yesterday, your honor. I would like to note that my client passed for each and every question with a plus 16 score. As you know, you need a plus six to pass and a minus six to fail. My client passed with a plus 16." I take a deep breath and subsequently, I watch Jo take a breath too. That just made me feel a little bit better. I passed the hell out of that lie detector test. "His results are in that folder as well, your honor. At this time, I have no further questions. I turn it over to Ms. Karev's council." My lawyer returns back to his seat and since he did, I start to stand up too.

"Stay there Mr. Karev, please." My mom's lawyer springs back up again and holds his hand out to me. "Permission to cross examine."

"Granted." The judge sounds a little preoccupied looking at the stuff in the folder my lawyer provided.

I sit back down in the chair and feel my palms begin to sweat once again. I wasn't prepared for cross examination. I thought only my lawyer and the judge would be questioning me. All I have to do is tell the truth though, right? That's all I have to do. The truth shall set you free…right? "How did Lyla obtain bruises to her face, head, neck and mouth?" He just jumps right into it. No preparation, no opening argument, nothing. He just jumps right in. "In as much detail as possible." He demands.

"It was…" I clear my throat. "June 12th of this year, my daughter and I were home alone. She began to jump on the couch and I told her to stop because I didn't want her to get hurt. She sat down on the couch and resumed watching television. I went in the kitchen trying to find something to make for dinner and when my back was turned, she began jumping on the couch yet again and like I suspected she would, she fell down off of it. She clipped her face on the corner of my coffee table. She hit her eye, which made her eye swell and she hit her mouth too, which caused her to bite down on her lip. I rushed into the living room, picked her up and looked at her."

"And you didn't take your daughter to the hospital, did you?" He folds his hands. "She sustained an injury like that and you didn't take her to the hospital. Why is that?"

"Because I examined her _myself._ I'm a pediatric surgeon at Pensacola Children's Hospital and I'm pretty good at my job. I looked at her face, examined her myself and saw no medical reason to take her to the hospital to be examined. She showed no signs of a concussion, no sighs of broken bones and no signs of serious injury. I cleared her myself, cheered her up, held her and moved the coffee table further away from the couch to ensure it would never happen again. She was being rambunctious and rebellious like most children her age. I told her not to jump on the couch and she did it anyway. Typical childish behavior. But if I had thought for one second that my child needed medical attention, I wouldn't have denied it. I checked her out and she was fine." I cross my feet again. I feel like I'm going to be here for a while.

"Tell me, how do you discipline little Lyla, Mr. Karev? What methods of discipline do you choose when she acts out in a 'typical childish' way?" He puts air quotes around "typical childish", which makes me really want to slap the shit out of him.

"I use the corner." I mumble, but remembering that I have to speak clearly and enunciate properly, I speak up. "My daughter is a dream. She hardly ever acts out, she listens, she doesn't throw tantrums, she's mild-mannered, shy, respectful and she's a very good kid. She doesn't require much discipline but she IS four years old and she DOES act out at times and when she does, I use the corner as a method of discipline. If she acts out, she goes straight to the corner for five minutes. While I don't have a problem with spanking a child, it is not my method of discipline. I don't put hands on my daughter but mostly because she doesn't need it."

"And your wife passed away last year, isn't that right?"

"Yes." I nod my head. What does Jenna have to do with what we're talking about?"

"And you've been single since then, isn't that right?"

"…For the most part yes, but—"

"Which means you haven't engaged in sexual activity in what…a year and some change." He interrupts me just as I was getting ready to tell about Jo. What does sex have to do with anything?! "Is it safe to say that a man like you…handsome man, attractive man, young…is it safe to say that a man like you has manly needs just like all men in this world?"

"…Yes." I wasn't quite sure how to answer that one. I mean, it was a yes or no question and saying no would've been a lie, but…I'm confused.

"It's possible you could've channeled those manly urges into a three year old, isn't that right? No woman in your life, no female around…" I'm physically sick at what he's trying to imply. What kind of sicko does this man think I am? I look at Jo. Her jaw is on the floor and she looks genuinely shocked. "Lack of sex has been known to drive men mad…make them do things they wouldn't normally do. Tell me Alex, is it possible that you acted out these sexual urges on your daughter? During bath times?"

"…NO!" Man, this is crazy! I would never touch a kid, let alone my own DAUGHTER. What kind of person do these people think I am? "I have NEVER once thought about my daughter in a way like that. I give my daughter baths every single day because she's FOUR, she can't wash herself and she's a child so she gets dirty. I don't ever and would never touch her or even think about her in that kind of way. I wouldn't even say that I even get…" I shake my head. "I have a girlfriend. She's been my girlfriend for a month but we've been messing with each other for three. And even before my girlfriend, I could've had women…grown women…women MY age. I don't touch my daughter. I have never and I WILL never. I work with kids every day. I love kids, I love my job…it's my job to protect kids. I take sick kids and make them better. Why would I ever harm a child?" I feel like I'm babbling and not making any sense right now but the fact that they could even imply that I would use my own child for sexual gratification is just gross, disturbing and disgusting. I would never.

"But you yourself have expressed thinking that your daughter is beautiful, is that right? And when other people express it, you don't seem to hesitate to agree. There's some degree of physical attraction there."

"I'm her _father._ Of course I think she's beautiful! She's my daughter!" I have to bawl my hands up into fists and look at Jo to calm down. I hold onto Jo's eyes. I have to calm down. "There's no physical or sexual attraction to my daughter. She's my daughter so of course I think she's gorgeous. And I can't take my daughter anywhere without someone telling me how cute, pretty or adorable she is. She's a beautiful child…she just gets that response from people. And I respectfully tell those people 'thank you'. I think my daughter is beautiful but she's my daughter. Name one father that's going to tell you that his daughter is ugly."

"I see, I see." He nods his head at me. "So tell me about the pizza your daughter was consuming when CPS came to your house. Pizza and Sprite, was it?"

"She had a very lengthy surgery the day before and we were all still very tired from that. I didn't feel like cooking anything major for dinner and my girlfriend didn't either so we ordered pizza. I don't usually make it a point to feed my daughter soda but it was a special occasion. She wasn't feeling well and if a little soda cheered her up, I gave it to her. It was one small cup of Sprite and it was for her dinner. She's well fed." I explain.

"You don't make it a point to feed her soda? But was there not a two month stretch in which you let your daughter dine on nothing BUT soda?"

"…She was going through a rough time. We all were." I sigh. "Her mother died…and I would try to feed her stuff from all the dishes people brought to our house. Or I would try and bake her things myself but she wouldn't eat. She started dropping off some weight because she would go days without eating. The only thing she would eat is lasagna, french fries and Mountain Dew. So in an attempt to get her to eat something, I did. I let her have soda and french fries and lasagna for a while. But once the grieving process was over, I got her back on a regular diet. She's well fed now and healthy as a horse. She's not overweight, she doesn't have high blood pressure or high cholesterol. She's fine now."

"She's healthy as a horse? Except for the life-threatening ear infection she sustained at the beginning of this month, an ear infection that wouldn't have required surgery if treated sooner…"

"Mastoiditis is not life-threatening and it was treated in a timely manner. It was treated quickly and for that reason, she's fine. It was an ear infection gone bad…it happens a lot in children her age. I had her doctor install a ventilation tube in her ear to prevent that from happening again." I'm getting killed up here. He's coming at me from all angles and I'm getting killed up here. I sound horrible. "It's very common and it won't reoccur."

"Is that your professional opinion, Mr. Karev?"

"Yes it is."

"A few more questions, Alex." He smirks at me like he knows that he's grilling me and I'm dying. Someone send me a raft or something because I'm drowning and everyone knows it. "Can you tell me about your daughter's toilet habits? Because you said in a report…and I quote…" He picks up a piece of paper and starts reading from it. "We are in the middle of toilet-training my daughter. She fell into the toilet and that is how she sustained the scratches and abrasions to hear rear end."

I roll my eyes and sigh. He's KILLING me here. "Here's the thing. My three year old was potty trained. She used the bathroom regularly, told us when she needed to go…she did everything but wipe herself. My wife and I wiped for her every time she used the bathroom but she used the toilet faithfully. And her mother died, and she wasn't toilet trained anymore. Just like that, she wasn't. She was and then she wasn't. And it happens sometimes. When children endure something traumatic that they don't know how to process, they regress. And my daughter did just that. She started sucking a pacifier again, sleeping with me again, using the bathroom on herself and talking like a baby. Her mother died and she regressed and that is a very normal defense mechanism for a child when they cannot process what happened to them…in my _professional opinion._ Lyla regressed when her mother died and I had to reteach her a lot of things. She is now toiled trained, she sleeps in her own bed, she doesn't take a pacifier anymore and she is slated to start preschool, not next Tuesday but the following Tuesday…on September 1st. She's thriving now. My girlfriend and I work together to ensure that she thrives."

"Your girlfriend…isn't she a felon?" I have to actively stop my jaw from dropping. I can't believe he said that. I cannot…oh, Jo. I look at her. Her face is so white. She's like…see-through. Did he really just say that? "You have a felon living in your house, isn't that right Mr. Karev?" And he's still going. "She's a felon with a drinking problem and she has charges on her from another state, including criminal homicide and manslaughter." I think Jo's going to throw up. Her face has absolutely no color in it and she's not even blinking. It's like someone just took a remote and turned her off. She's not even breathing. "Mugshot provided in the folder, your honor... Your girlfriend moved to Florida to escape charges...what kind of charges would those be?"

"Objection, your honor. That's hearsay… Ms. Wilson has never been charged with felonies, evidence can be sustained in her background check. Not that it pertains to this case, but the only thing Ms. Wilson has ever been charged with is one count of reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor in the state of Massachusetts and a misdemeanor here in the state of Florida. She served NO jail time, paid NO court costs…it's no more serious than a traffic violation." My lawyer stands up. But it's too late. I think Jo's already dead. She's really not moving. You could hear a pin drop in this courtroom. "Objection…doesn't pertain to this case. This court is out for the best interest of the child, not out for my client's girlfriend who might as well forgot to pay a parking ticket. On the record, still not as it pertains to this case, Ms. Wilson is a two time Ivy League graduate. But I object, your honor. I object."

"Sustained…order in this courtroom." She cracks her gavel. I really want to get off his stand, go over here and hold Jo. She looks like she's been turned to stone. I want to hold her so bad.

"No further questions, your honor."


	56. And Overruled

I shift my weight off my back leg and put it onto my front one, since it's starting to become numb. I feel like I've been sitting up here for hours but the last time I checked the clock, it's only been ten minutes. For ten minutes, I've been sitting up here listening to people try and make me sound like I'm some kind of sick, twisted bastard. For ten minutes, I've had to sit here and answer outrageous questions and listen to them berate my girlfriend and the worst part is that I just have to sit here and listen to this, under the advice of my lawyer. I have to sit here, listen to them try to make it sound like I'm molesting my daughter, watch the woman I love desperately hold back tears and I have to act like none of it is effecting me because if I show any kind of emotion, it might make me seem unlikable. And god forbid I seem unlikable to the judge because then I can seriously kiss all chances of getting Lyla back goodbye. So for the longest ten minutes of my entire life, I've had to sit here stone-faced, quiet and still manage to tell the truth even though they're making me sound like a monster. I just want to go home. I didn't know this hearing was going to be like this. I wasn't prepared for all of this.

I'm not sure what the worst part of this entire thing has been thus far because honestly, all of it's been pretty damn horrible. The wooden seat I'm sitting in is hard, uncomfortable and my butt hurts. It smells like paint thinner mixed with bleach in here and I'm starting to get a headache. The words and accusations that my mom's lawyer was just throwing at me are still ringing in the back of my head and all I want to do is cry but I can't. I want to get the hell off this stand and go hold Jo because she still looks like she's losing it and it's killing me that I can't go comfort her. It's my fault that she's here, what that lawyer did to her was inexcusable and I just feel so guilty because that would've never happened to her if it wasn't for me. Everything about this just sucks and I can't pinpoint a part that sucks the most because it's all bad. "Mr. Abrams, please approach the bench." The judge closes the white folder my lawyer provided at the beginning of this hearing and opens up the yellow one my mom gave. At the judge's request, my lawyer gets up from our table and walks up to the judge's desk. "I wish to proceed with my own interrogation. Please denote for the record that your client understands his rights and understands the questions he is required and not required to answer." Her voice is so harsh sounding…I'm really, truly, honestly not feeling good about the way this is going. But my lawyer hasn't thrown all his resources towards giving Jo custody just yet so maybe it's not going as bad for me as I thought it was. Then again…they just called Jo a felon. Maybe he can't push towards getting her custody anymore.

"My client understands." My lawyer takes the white folder and walks back to his seat. My eyes follow him all the way to his seat until he sits back down and after that, my eyes wander to Jo. Her face is still colorless and she looks like she wants to get up and leave but I don't think she realizes how much it means to me that she hasn't. She could very well get up and leave right now because this hearing has nothing to do with her and she doesn't have to be here but she didn't. She didn't get and she didn't leave, even though she looks like she really wants to. When I feel myself wanting to shed a tear at the fact that my woman is still here despite what that lawyer just did to her, I have to look away. I look at my dad, who's sitting directly behind my lawyer. For a nice change, he's actually wearing clean blue jeans with a crease ironed in them and a nice, dark red sweater. Michelle's next to him and she's wearing a navy blue sundress with a white knit jacket over it. And sitting directly behind my dad and Michelle are Aaron and Amber. I haven't seen my brother and my sister in a really long time so it's nice to finally see them again but I wish it wasn't under these circumstances. I guess I'm just glad that they actually came because it's not like Miami and wherever the hell Aaron ran off to is a hop, skip and jump away. They had to take time out to be here and I appreciate that. It's a strange feeling to know that everyone is here for me. I wish there was a way I could show them all that I'm appreciative of this.

"Mr. Karev, I am going to ask you a series of questions. Your lawyer expressed to me that you understand what this means, stop me if you do not." The judge starts talking to me again. I remain silent and run my fingers through my hair. My lawyer told me the other day what this was going to mean. Basically all I have to do is answer a bunch of questions so that the judge can get to know me better. I'm not looking forward to it but I'm just trying to look at it as just another hoop I have to jump through to get my daughter back. "I shall proceed." I hear papers rustling but I just wait. At this point, all I want is a verdict or whatever it's called. "What is your date of birth?"

"January 5th, 1985." I speak into the microphone.

"What is your educational background?"

"I'm graduated from high school, graduated from Florida State University with a degree in Biology and I graduated from Florida State's medical school with a doctor of osteopathic medicine degree."

"And where are you currently employed?"

"Pensacola Children's Hospital. I work as a pediatric surgeon."

"And approximately how do you make?"

"Roughly…somewhere in the neighborhood of $400,000 a year."

"I see…" Her voice trails off. I have to admit that she's not exactly what I was expecting from a judge in a child custody case. I was expecting her to be a little bit warmer and friendlier because after all, she deals with children. "And what was the date of your marriage?"

"June 23rd, 2008."

"How many children were born during your marriage?"

"One."

"Did you and your spouse discuss having children?"

"Yes."

"And what was her attitude towards having children?"

"We both wanted children at some point in our lives. We mutually agreed on that." It hurts talking about Jenna and what our lives were like when she was still alive but I gotta admit that it doesn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it might. It's actually pretty easy.

"What was your spouse's reaction to the pregnancy?"

"She was elated. We didn't plan to get pregnant at that exact moment but the both of us were thrilled. We always wanted children…we didn't know when, but we knew we wanted them and our dream was finally coming true. She was ecstatic…we both were."

"And…when was your daughter born? Approximately how much did she weigh?"

"Lyla was born on July 15th of 2011 and she was healthy eight pounds when she was born." I smirk. Ly's birthday was such a great day. Jenna was only in labor with her for three hours and she had her out in six pushes. It was easy for Jenna. And of course, Ly was gorgeous. She came out with a head full of thick black hair and the darkest eyes I've ever seen. She was a perfect baby. I couldn't put her down.

"Uh-huh. Have you ever been arrested or convicted of a felony or misdemeanor, other than traffic violations?"

"No ma'am." I shake my head.

"What is the present state of your health?"

"I'm fairly healthy…a few cavities in my mouth that I gotta take care of, but for the most part…" When I say that, everyone in the courtroom has a nice chuckle. Even the judge laughs. I look around and finally see a smile crack across Jo's face. That smile is the first reaction she's had since that lawyer did what he did to her. It's nice to know that she's actually capable of another emotion.

"And for the record, what is the present state of your spouse's health?"

"She's deceased." I speak less clearly when I answer that question.

"But you have a longtime girlfriend, is that correct?"

"Yes ma'am."

"State her name, age and occupation please."

"Uh…her name's Josephine Wilson. She's 29 years old and she used to waitress at a local restaurant but she quit that job because of some difficulties. She's currently unemployed but she has a teaching certificate from Harvard University and a degree in mathematical sciences from Princeton University."

"And she has never been convicted of any felonies."

"No ma'am." I shake my head again. "The most she has is what we provided record of. No felonies."

"Yes, I don't see any record of felonies in the file." She mumbles. "And she's living under your roof…does that mean she'd be a presence in your child's life? A possible mother figure?"

"Yes ma'am, she would."

"And I'm trusting you use your judgment before allowing anyone around your daughter…although I'm not sure how much of a threat an Ivy League graduate poses." She mumbles that too. "Can you tell me about the physical, emotional and mental health of your daughter? Has she ever had any serious physical injuries, mental health issues or emotional detriments that have alarmed you?"

"Physically, Lyla's perfect. The most she's ever had was the surgery on her ear but I'm assuming the people she's been staying with have been taking care of her post-operative medications and if that holds true, she should be fine. She's physically in perfect health. Mentally, I think she's alright too. Losing her mother at such a young age took a toll on her, sure. But I got her checked out by a child psychologist up at the hospital where I work and I was told that her grieving process and her coping skills were all within normal range for her age. I was told that she has what they call 'selective mutism' which just means that she picks and chooses when she wants to talk and who she wants to talk to. Other than that, my daughter is in perfect health. Never had a broken bone, no bumps, no bruises…she's perfect."

"Can you describe for me a typical day in the life of your daughter?"

"Um…well if I'm not working, it's pretty simple. She wakes up around 9:30-10:00 every morning. I'm awake before she is and I'm usually downstairs fixing her breakfast. I feed her and we play for a bit. She'll watch TV, go up to her bedroom to play with her toys, play outside…it all depends on the day. Sometimes I'll even take her to the beach since it's fairly close to our house." I clear my throat. "I'll feed her some lunch around 12:00 and she'll usually fall asleep around 1:00-1:30. She'll nap until about 3:00…bath time is consistently at 8:00. I give her a snack before bed and she's usually asleep by 10:00 every night. She has a pretty stable routine around her when she's at home with me."

"Right. And what are some of the things you feed her for dinner? About how many times a week does she eat take out or fast food?"

"Um…we usually eat take out or fast food once…sometimes twice a week. Never any more than that. And I make her lots of things. Her favorite is lasagna so we usually eat a lot of that. She likes pierogis, hot dogs, hamburgers, corn, carrots, steak, roast beef, spaghetti, chicken and mashed potatoes…I make her pretty much everything."

"So you primarily prepare the meals for her to eat?"

"Yes ma'am. My father cooks for her at times and sometimes my girlfriend will make dinner for the house but it's usually me. I'm the usually the one that prepares her food."

"And I take it as you don't receive welfare help? No food stamps or cash benefits, I'm assuming?"

"No ma'am. There's no need for government assistance. I make enough money to support."

"And your girlfriend? Does she receive welfare benefits?"

"No." I shake my head.

"Only a few more questions, Mr. Karev." She sounds somewhat sympathetic, which is a nice change from her usual brash manner. She said only a few more questions but I'm still not too thrilled about that. A few more questions could mean anything. Could be two more questions, could be three, could be twenty. Haven't I answered enough? How much do they need to know about me? How many more things could she possibly ask me? If I haven't convinced her yet that I'm a good father, will I ever convince her? "What was your childhood like growing up?"

"…I like to think I had an okay childhood. My parents divorced a while ago but it was for the better of their relationship. My father was a pretty good father to me and my siblings. My mother was an okay mom too but…you know, it's kind of hard growing up with a mother that has mental health issues. It wasn't always great but it was okay. And the parts that weren't great…" I shrug my shoulders. "I dunno, I like to think that it just made me a better parent."

"And how do you mean that?"

"I mean it taught me how to protect the ones I love at a fairly young age." I glance at Aaron and Amber. I know Ambs was too young to remember all the shit mom used to put us through when dad had to work but I know Aaron knows what I'm talking about. I can tell by both of their body languages. Amber looks empathetic and like she's really paying attention to what's going on but I can tell by the look behind her eyes that she doesn't fully understand the magnitude of what I'm speaking to the judge about. The look on Aaron's face is the exact opposite. He looks cold and hardened and I can tell he knows exactly what I'm talking about. He remembers all about the time mom tried to kill him. One minute she was baking cookies in the kitchen with him and the next minute, he got mouthy with her and she took a knife to his neck for it. I had to jump in and make sure she didn't hurt him. And later that night when she still wasn't over it, she started choking him in his sleep. Mom wasn't horrible when she was happy…because when she was happy, she was extremely happy. But when she was sad? It wasn't safe for any of us. "There have been some serious advancements in medicine today and she's medicated now but before all of that…it was like living in an asylum. We never knew if we were going to wake up to a good mom or if we were going to wake up to mom that wanted to kill us. Everyone would just…walk on eggshells just to make sure we wouldn't set her off. I learned to change my sister's diapers, help my brother with his homework…it was a lot to deal with at 11 years old but I think it made me a better parent in the end. I wouldn't be the kind of dad I am today if it wasn't for everything I went through."

"And it's to my knowledge that your brother and sister are present today, would that be correct?"

"Yes."

"How old are your siblings?"

"My brother is 22 and my sister is 19."

"Great." She clicks her pen shut and puts it down. "You can step down now, Mr. Karev." Finally! I scoot back and stand up out of the chair. My ass is practically numb from sitting on it for so long and my legs are stiff. It's about damn time I can get up. Does this mean that the hearing is almost over? I hope so. I just want a decision. I just want to know if I'm going to leave out of here with my daughter or if I'm going to go back to an empty house. I know I probably shouldn't, considering the fact that anything emotional I do can make me seem unlikable in the eyes of the judge, but I can't just stand here and let her think that I don't realize she's still shaken up and I don't want her to think that I don't care. So after I step down, instead of going the short way to get back to my seat, I walk around and enter through the gate closest to Jo. When I walk past her, I put my hand on her shoulder and rub it. She jumps softly as soon as I touch him but calms down. I want to kiss her cheek but that'd probably be pushing it so I take my hand away from her shoulder and sit down in my seat. "Can I speak to the doctor examined the little girl?" The judge sifts through some more papers. "Dr. Kelly Nicholas?"

I'm still not supposed to be looking at my mom so I keep my head straightforward but from the corner of my eye, I can see someone stand up from over on my mom's side of the courtroom. A dark-skinned woman with long, black braids opens the gate that leads from behind the spectator section and approaches the judge's desk. She produces a pink folder and hands it to her. After today, I don't want to see anymore folders for a LONG time. I close my eyes and massage the spot in my temple that's starting to throb and give me a pulsating headache as the judge opens up the pink folder and starts looking through it. When will this torture be over? I hear the judge and the doctor rambling on at each other but I'm not exactly listening too well to know exactly what they're saying. What if the judge can't come to an agreement today and gives us a continuance? I don't know what the hell I'll do if that happens. I don't know if I can endure all of this another time. I don't know if I can come back, sit in this courtroom and do it all over again. We need to come to a conclusion today. I can't do this all over again. I was not expecting it to be like this. I was expecting my mom's lawyer to talk some bullshit to the judge and I was expecting my lawyer to shoot down the bullshit. I was prepared to answer some questions and I expected to be a little bit annoyed once or twice but I was in no way prepared for this. In the 45 minutes I've spent in this courtroom, I've already felt more emotions than most people care to feel in an entire lifetime. I've been angry, I've been agitated, I've been saddened, I've been disgusted and I've been downright defeated all in a matter of 45 freaking minutes. "State your name and occupation for the record." The judge's voice makes me open my eyes and stop rubbing my temple.

"Kelly Nicholas…I'm a pediatric psychologist and I specialize in diagnosing and treating children that have been victims of sexual and physical abuse." The doctor sitting in the same chair that I just got up from crosses her legs and tosses a thick black braid behind her back.

"And you are the doctor that examined the little girl, is that correct?"

"Correct."

"And can you explain to me exactly what your exam entailed? And let me know what you found?" The judge asks the doctor and this time, I actually perk up and listen. I do want to know what exactly that doctor did to Lyla. I wasn't there to witness the exam and when I tried to talk to Lyla about it when I first saw her after she got taken away, she was kind of just…passive about it. She acted like she didn't really want to talk about it and she acted like she didn't really know what I was talking about and I just took it as she didn't want to relive it and for that reason, I didn't make her. But I'm actually going to hear what happened during the exam so I make it a point to listen on this one. "In as much detail as possible."

"On August 10th, the little girl was brought to me and it was to my understanding that she had reportedly been both physically and sexually abused by her father. The child was brought to me by her grandfather. I began her exam like every other exam…with a visual. During my visual, I didn't notice any visible signs of abuse. She had no bruises, no scratches, no markings on her body and she didn't appear scared…most children that are victims of abuse have a very specific way of acting and she did not act at all under the typical realm. She seemed nervous and very timid but in my opinion, that also seemed like it was a part of her everyday personality. It didn't seem like the nervous and timid act was something that she was expressing due to physical abuse. Her weight was normal for a child of her stature, her height was a little under where a typical four year old should be but she did not appear malnourished or underfed. My visual exam didn't cause any alarm to me."

"How long have you been working in your field?" The judge holds her hand up to stop the woman.

"15 years." The doctor answers.

"So you're pretty efficient at what you do. Would you say that you've got your job down to an exact science?"

"Yes I would."

"And about…how sure are you that your exams are accurate?"

"I'm 100% sure that the exams I give to my children are accurate. I've been doing my job for a very long time and I'm pretty good at detecting signs of abuse."

"Continue." The judge writes something down.

"So I began Lyla's exam with the interview portion…and I used the most age-appropriate technique I possibly could. I asked the grandfather to leave the room to prevent any coaching or untruthful responses. I asked the little girl if she knew the difference between good touch and bad touch and she did. She explained to me that good touch is wiping, being bathed, being hugged and kissed…specifically by her father. She explained that bad touch, in her own words, is when someone touches her 'no-no' spots and hurts. She was pretty clear on the difference and it became clear to me that I was dealing with a child that understood what it meant to be inappropriately touched. I then brought in a plastic doll and I asked her to locate the private parts on the doll. She pointed out the doll's breasts, buttocks and genitalia. I asked her if anyone ever hurt those spots on her body and she told me no. I asked her to demonstrate on the doll what happens when her father touches her private parts and she demonstrated very normal behaviors…such as washing and wiping. She didn't indicate that her father was inappropriately touching her in any way and I didn't detect that she was being coached to lie in any way through her body language. The child seemed very truthful. I asked her if her father ever played games with her that she wasn't allowed to tell anyone about and she didn't understand what I meant, which is typically a sign that a child still maintains innocence. The only games she mentioned to me were games of hide and seek, tag…usual child games."

"You said it didn't appear that the child was being coached to say certain things?"

"No, your honor. Her story remained consistent, no matter how many times I asked questions and no matter how I phrased the questions. She didn't at all appear to be coached." It makes me sick that my daughter was subjected to that. I just don't think a four year old should have to sit down and tell a stranger what goes on while she's in the bathroom. That's a total invasion of her privacy. I guess the good thing is that Lyla might not remember any of this when she gets older. She might remember bits and pieces of it but I sincerely hope that she doesn't remember the time she had to sit in front of a stranger and rub a doll's crotch to demonstrate the way she got a bath. That has to be degrading for anyone; much less a four year old.

"Continue."

"After the psychological interview portion, I then had my colleague come in and observe while I conducted the physical examination."

"Why did you have a spectator in the room while evaluating the child?"

"Because it's my policy that no one examines a child alone in a room. My office is meant to be a safe, secure environment for children. No child is ever and will ever be examined in a room alone with another adult."

"You may continue."

"During the physical examination, I had the child remove her clothing and put on a gown. She was a little hesitant to do that, which didn't strike me as odd because again, it seemed like modesty and shyness were just traits that the child possessed. It didn't take much to get her to put the gown on though. I checked for broken bones that didn't heal very well because those are usually signs of abuse, I checked for bruises, I checked for misalignment of her joints and hips and I checked the mobility of her limbs. The only abnormality I noted on her topical exam was a small incision with stitches behind her ear and that was explained by a surgery she had previously undergone. I found no broken bones, no bruises and she was perfectly mobile. In my professional opinion, the child showed no signs of being a victim of physical abuse. I examined the child's sex organs after that and everything appeared fine. I found no swelling, no redness, no tenderness and no abrasions on the vulva. The hymen was still intact." I cringe. There's something I never wanted to hear…ever. I never wanted to hear anyone talk about my daughter like that. I'm extremely uncomfortable with that. "No swelling, no tenderness and no abrasions on the buttocks and her breasts checked out normal too. That was the end of my exam with Lyla."

"And in your professional opinion, what could you deduce from your examination of the child?"

"In my professional opinion, the child was not touched and not abused. She checked out fine, she didn't exhibit any signs of sexual or physical abuse and when I asked her about her father, she talked about him with adoration. If a child was being abused, she would not be particularly affectionate towards her abuser in such a way that I saw. I can say with 100% certainty that this child was not abused in any way."

"You may step down." The judge closes the pink folder the doctor handed to her and piles it on top of my mom's attorney's yellow folder. This is beginning to get ridiculous. If the doctor says that she was never abused, if Lyla herself says that she was never abused then why the hell are we here? Why can't they just give me my damn daughter and let me go home? Why can't they just leave us alone? They can't keep her from me if there's no evidence that I ever abused her, can they? I gave explanations for every bump and bruise she had, I passed my lie detector test, I did every single thing they asked of me to do. Why are we even here? Before the doctor even makes her way back to her seat, the judge starts talking again. "Bailiff." She motions for the man dressed in an all gray police uniform to come over to her. Without skipping a beat, the man hurries to the judge. The judge whispers something inaudible to the man and sends him back to where he came from only this time, he disappears through a door. "I want everyone in this courtroom to understand that the main goal here is to do what would be in the best interest of child. It is the job of the court to rule in the best interest of the child and henceforth it is my job to ensure that the child will be placed in a loving, safe environment that will give her the tools the thrive and become a productive member of society but most importantly, the tools she will need to become happy and well adjusted." I think I'm about to finally get a ruling. Please god let her come home to me. There's no safer place in the world for her to be than at home with me. Please. Nobody in their right mind could think that giving her to my mom would be in her best interest. Please don't let the legal system fail me. "It is my duty to collect every facet of evidence to ensure that I make the correct decision so before I make my decision, I want to hear from someone more central to the matter." WHAT THE HELL. I sigh hard and put my head down. Still no decision? This isn't going well for me. I can feel it and I'm getting sick to my stomach. I have this feeling that I'm not going to walk out of here with my daughter.

When I pick my head back up, the door that the bailiff went through is opening up again and he's holding it open. A young blonde woman dressed in a brown business suit comes walking through the door that's being held open and it doesn't take long to see that she's escorting someone into the courtroom. My heart skips a beat once I see her, even though I saw her just yesterday. I missed that little girl so much and it's a little bit surreal to see her, knowing that this whole thing could either be the last time I ever see her or the time I get to take her home. I love her more than words can even say. Just seeing her makes this entire thing worth it. I was sitting here irritated and trying to even think about why the hell I'm here in the first place and as soon as I see her, everything just goes away. I'd sit in this courtroom for hours on end if it meant I get to bring her home. It's all for her. I can do this for her. The blonde woman escorts her right past my table and I get a good look at her. Her hair is parted down the middle and pulled back in two neat pigtails that rest down the middle of her back, she's wearing a pair of cheetah print leggings with black sparkly sandals and her shirt is black with a cheetah printed cat on the front. I'm thinking Michelle dressed her again this morning. There's no way my dad dressed her in that. Blondie helps Lyla up into the chair, whispers something to the judge and steps away. The judge nods her head and blondie turns toward all of us. "I'm Jennifer Banks. I study under Judge Mason." She introduces herself to us and turns back around to Lyla. "Can you tell everyone your name, Lyla? They'd like to meet you." She speaks gently, which I appreciate. I wouldn't be able to keep my cool if the judge or one of the lawyers were barking at her. In typical Lyla fashion, she's sitting up in the chair swinging her feet and looking down at the ground out of nervousness. I think they probably told her that she wasn't allowed to talk to me while she's in here because if I know my daughter the way I think I do, I know that she would be screaming my name and waving at me. "Can you tell us your birthday?" She stops kicking her feet. "Do you remember how I told you that I was going to ask you some questions in here?" Lyla nods her head. "You think maybe you can answer those questions for me?" She nods again. "Can you tell me about your mommy? What's she like?" She doesn't answer her. She's way too scared. "Lyla…just pretend like it's you and me. Pretend like you're just talking to me and nobody else…okay?" All she does is nod. "So tell me about your mommy. What's she like?"

"…Her in heabben wiff angels…her an angel so that's where her lives now." She's still looking down and she's talking at the floor but at least they got her to talk at all. "My first mommy in heabben. My next mommy is still here." She takes her hand off the chair and brings it up to her face. I think her nose was itching because she literally sticks her finger up it. At least she doesn't eat it though. She just puts her hand back after she sticks her finger up her nose.

"So tell me about your next mommy. Does she have a name?" Blondie tilts her head to the side. "Do you like her?"

Lyla nods her head. "Her name is JoeDoe…I like her a lot. Her cook dinna, read stories, play games…tuck me in bed and…her pasketti is really good." I start smiling when she says that. "JoeDoe my mommy now and her a good mommy too. Her is really nice."

"What are some of the things Jojo's taught you?"

"Um…her teach me…to go to the potty, how to and how to give letters to my mommy in heabben….and her teach me…um…her teach me not to say bitch." Everyone in the courtroom gets a laugh out of that, including the judge. Still smirking, I glance down at Jo. She's smiling too but her eyes are closed and she's shaking her head.

Still recovering from her laugh, Blondie continues talking to her. "I'm glad your new mommy is really nice. And I'm really glad she makes good spaghetti…because good spaghetti is really important, isn't it?" Finally, Lyla lifts her head up and looks at the woman. "Can you tell me about your daddy now? What's your daddy like?"

"Daddy is the best." Her face lights up when she talks about me and that's a feeling that's beyond words. It's almost the same way I light up when I talk about her. She's smiling and her eyes are sparkling and she's just so happy to talk about me. That itself should just tell the judge who she should be with. "Him so funny. Him…him watch moobies wiff me and him lemme shave my beard when him shaves his." Again, she makes the courtroom laugh. "…Him makes me shave wiff a comb but it still work 'acause I gots no hair on my face now. And um…him sings Fwozen wiff me and him lets me do his hair. And we maked a tent and watch moobies in it and eated popcorn. And him taked me to see Cinnawella. We go to Dinney. Him listen to me sing all the time too and him says I'm a good singer so we play 'Merican Idol. And I winned 'acause him forgot the words to Let It Go and I didn't forgot the words to Shake It Off. Him a bad singer too…him losed bad. Him losed on Just Dance too. Him bad at games but him still play."

"That's very nice, Lyla." Blondie smiles at her. "But what about when you're bad? What does daddy do when you're bad?"

"I has to go to the corner." She pokes her lip out at that. "I don't like the corner."

"I don't think anybody likes the corner." Blondie holds up one finger to the judge. "You must really miss your daddy, huh? When's the last time you saw him?" I feel like someone just poured ice cold water down my shirt. I look down at Jo and she's thinking the same thing as I am. Her face is stone once again and she has the "oh shit" look on her face like I do. Oh my god. This is bad. This is very very very very bad. If I didn't lose her before, I definitely lost her now. There's no way they're going to give her to me when they find out that we've been breaking the rules. I feel tears prick at the corners of my eyes but I desperately…DESPERATELY try to hold them back. I'm so shit out of luck. Damn.

"…I haven't seen daddy in a lot of days. I miss him." I can tell she had to think about it before she said it but she said it. SHE SAID IT. My daughter…. I take a really deep breath. She's so damn smart. We tell her every time she comes over my house that nobody is allowed to know that she comes over and she always says that she knows but I never expected someone to ask her about it and I was sure that if someone asked her about it in a roundabout way like the woman just did, she would spill. But she didn't! What kind of genius child do I have?

"Thank you, Lyla…we're going to go back to the play room now…okay?"

"Kay." Lyla hops down off the stand and grabs Blondie's hand again. When she walks by me again, she still stays silent which lets me know that they did indeed tell her that she's not allowed to talk to me. But when she walks past Jo, she lifts her hand up and waves at her and of course, Jo waves back. Before I know it, my daughter and the blonde chick have disappeared from the courtroom again and it's silent. The judge continues scribbling things down on a sheet of paper.

I don't know what kind of feeling I have about this…

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

Is it weird that I feel a sense of…relief? It's all over and it's all settled and hopefully we'll never have to go back to court ever again. I feel a sense of relief but I think that it's wrong for me to. It wasn't really my business and it really wasn't my battle to be fighting, yet I still can't help but feel good about everything being over. Maybe it's because I can finally have my boyfriend back. I can finally have the old Alex back. I missed him. I missed the Alex he was before all this custody shit came into play. I'm really just hoping that everything can snap back to normal now and hopefully we can all move on with our lives. Because like I said, it really wasn't my battle to fight and it was none of my business but in some weird, contorted kind of way, it kind of was my business because it was affecting me just like it was affecting everyone else. I was being dragged into it from all different angles and somehow, I still managed to maintain my role as supportive girlfriend throughout everything. I totally wanted to just run out of that courtroom earlier when that lawyer started trashing me. I didn't know what to think. How could he just say false things like that? I mean technically, I am sort of a felon but I'm not really one either. I was never charged with any felonies so that doesn't make me a felon even though technically, I should be. It took everything in me to not get up, call that lawyer out on his shit and leave the courthouse. I just feel like that was so inappropriate of him to do that. I had nothing to do with it and he was trashing me! The whole entire hearing pissed me off to be quite honest. I feel like they brought me into it more than I needed to be into it. I'm just the girlfriend here. They didn't need to know about my occupation and whether or not I receive food stamps. What do I have to do with Alex getting his daughter back? That entire hearing pissed me off. See, this is why I fucking hate law enforcement. I was irritated the whole time sitting there. The WHOLE time, I was pissed off. It probably looked like I was sad and trying not to cry and to some extent, that's true. The sadness part isn't true but the trying not to cry thing is true. I didn't want to cry because I was hurt, I wanted to cry because I was so pissed off. But I was there for Alex and I had to keep my composure. I just kept repeating over and over in my head, "it's for Alex, it's for Alex" and that helped to calm me down at least a little bit.

I lunge forward so that I can grab a small appetizer plate without reaching over anybody else's plate, since there's so many of us. I use my fork to scoot the basket of mozzarella sticks over towards my placemat to again, avoid reaching over someone else's plate. I pile a couple of cheese sticks on my plate and scoot the basket back over. Beside me, Alex turns his head and makes it so blatantly obvious that he's looking at me. "…Get your own." I pick up a cheese stick and take a bite of it. He says nothing, just keeps staring at me. "…Here, you greedy fuck." I hand him my half-bitten cheese stick and roll my eyes. "Can't have shit to myself." I put my hand against his cheek and push his face away from mine but it turns out that his tongue was out so I got a handful of spit. "Ew!" I start laughing and wipe my hand on my pants. "You're so nasty!" I turn and look at him while he's chewing and grab a piece of cheese hanging out of his mouth. "Saving this for later?"

"…Saving a lot of things for later." He winks at me and blows a quick kiss. I shake my head at him. He's a mess. He would be the one to make a sex joke in front of a bunch of people. Granted, nobody else is really paying attention to us as much as they're paying attention to the guest of honor, but still. There are five other people aside from me and him sitting at this table and he's busy being nasty. We established like ten minutes ago that we were going to have lots and lots of celebratory sex tonight but he doesn't need to discuss it in front of his family. This is supposed to be a celebratory lunch for Lyla. He scoots closer to me and wraps his arm around my waist. I can tell that Alex is already happier. He's been quite goofy, playful and clingy since we left the courthouse and I have to admit that it's nice to see him back to normal. He strokes my hip underneath the table and pulls me closer to him, clearly open with the PDA. "Ly? What do you wanna do when we get home?" He puts his head against my shoulder and talks to her from across the table. "You wanna go somewhere?"

Lyla's busy playing some kind of game on Alex's sister's phone while we're waiting for our main courses to come out. She looks up from the phone and at Alex. "…I just wanna go home, daddy. That's all." Everyone around the table, including myself, says "aww" at the same time. That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard. He asked her if she wanted to do anything and knowing Alex, he meant that she can go wherever she wanted to go and do whatever she wanted to do…and all she could say is that she wanted to go home. That says something. She really missed being home. Alex's sister adjusts Lyla's positioning on her lap and kisses her cheek. Alex's sister is supermodel-worthy. She's got the long, flowy blonde hair, the blue/green eyes, the porcelain skin, the bright pink lips and the long eyelashes. She's gorgeous. "Do you have…Candy Cwush, Aunt Amby?" Lyla shoves the phone back at her.

"She just wants to go home." I pile my head on top of Alex's, which is still resting on my shoulder. "I told you it was all gonna be okay, didn't I?" I reach across my body just so I can give him a makeshift hug. "…I thought your ass was grass there in the courtroom for a minute, not gonna lie. When the girl asked her when the last time she saw you was? I thought your ass was grass…" He starts laughing. "I did. I was like 'nope…damn. It's all over.' I was like 'better luck next time'. It was looking rough there for a second."

"Yeah, I thought my ass was grass too." He keeps laughing. "I thought she was going to blow it. But she pulled that answer outta her ass. I even asked my dad if he coached her to say that earlier this morning and he said he didn't even think to mention it. So she pulled that answer clean outta her ass. I told you…Lyla's too smart for her own good." He lifts his head up from off my shoulder. "I couldn't believe she said that. I'm raising a little con artist here."

"Yeah, well…as long as she's well-rounded." I wink at him.

"So what about you?" He kisses the side of my lips to avoid getting my lipstick all over his. "Are you ready to live with me plus a four year old? Because I can always buy you your house back." The hand he has that's still against my hip starts creeping around to my back. "You think you can handle me and Lyla?"

"How hard can it be? How much different can it be than the way we're already living? The only difference is that she won't be going back over your dad's house at 11:00 every night and I'll actually have someone to sit around in the house with while you're at work." He keeps trying to make it seem like living with him and Lyla is going to be some big huge adjustment for me but I don't know how many times I have to tell him that I can handle it. I've been living with him for a week now and I'm already used to it; that's how big of a deal it WASN'T to move in with him. It basically feels like the same way we were living back when I had my own house. We sleep in the same bed, we wake up next to each other, I cook for him, sometimes he cooks for me. The only difference is that I actually shower at his house now, I have to put the toilet seat down sometimes and when I run to the store for things, I go to his house instead of my house. It's really not that much different than it was. He keeps asking me if I think I can handle a four year old too but haven't I been handling a four year old? I feed Lyla, I bathe her, I play with her…that's basically it. He's making this more serious than what it is, all because he doesn't want me to feel uncomfortable. "I gotta get a job soon though…" I sigh and pick over another cheese stick. "With you working and with Lyla starting preschool in a couple weeks…I'll be all alone in that house."

"I know…We'll work on it." He rubs my hip and sits up straight again. Truth is, the only thing that's bothering me about living with him is feeling like a freeloader. I know I shouldn't, because Alex makes it a point to tell me every day that he doesn't mind paying the bills and putting gas in my car but I do. I feel like the most useless, mooching piece of crap on the planet. I need a job. I don't miss the Lobster Hut after a week and a few days but I do miss the money. I miss feeling like I actually contribute to my life. Right now, I feel like I'm living in a shelter. I probably shouldn't feel that way considering the fact that I live with my boyfriend, but I do. I really do and every day that goes by without me getting a phone call from some school is another day where I start to hate myself more. I am living in a shelter…or I'm like a live-in nanny. For the last week, it's been Alex goes to work and stays gone for hours. I wake up, I do the dishes, I clean up around the house and I sit around on my ass until either Alex gets home from work of Jimmy drops Lyla off for a few hours. The house is freaking spotless because neither me nor Alex are truly dirty people so I usually just find things to do. Like the other day, I cleaned up the basement and organized Lyla's toy closet. And the day after that, I swept the back porch. I feel like a maid…or a nanny. I don't like feeling like I depend on him but I guess I do right now. I just want a job. "Now that the hearing's out of our way, we can work on getting you a job and stuff…"

"Maybe I should just go back to school." I peel all the breading off the cheese stick until all I'm left with is one big glob of mozzarella cheese. "Obviously none of the schools could use math teachers right now…maybe I should just go back to school and finish what I started by being an actuary." I shrug my shoulders. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, actually. I could get a part-time job at a store around Millerton or maybe even up in Pensacola and go back to school. I'd still love to be an actuary. "I just don't want to sit around and do nothing. The last time I sat around and let a man take care of me…" I stop myself. Alex doesn't like it when I compare him to Mark. "I just have to do something."

"If you want to go back to school Jo, I'll support that. How much longer will it be if you decide to do that?" He takes a sip of his Dr. Pepper. "Is that four more years? Or what?"

I shake my head. "Two since I've already got my bachelor's in mathematical science." I sigh. "But I really want to teach. I haven't even taught before. I'll feel so lousy if I give up a degree that I never got the chance to do anything with. The most I've ever done was student teach and it wasn't really anything. I really do want to teach but I don't feel like anybody's going to hire me. I feel like such a bum…"

"But you're not." He slips his hand into mine and brings it up to his mouth so he can kiss it. "I'll tell you what…tomorrow, I'm off. We'll get up early tomorrow…around 10:00 and we'll all take a trip up to Pensacola. I have to finish getting Lyla's school supplies anyway…she needs a bookbag and a lunchbox…I was waiting to see if I got custody before I bought everything, so yeah… but anyway, we'll go up there and I'll be with you and we're going to go and fill out a bunch of applications. Every school we come across up there…public, private, charter, elementary, middle, high school, reform, boarding, alternative…we're going to apply to. Someone's gonna hire you." He strokes my fingertips. "And in the meantime, you can look up what you have to do for you to finish getting your actuary degree. You should go back to school and be what you wanted to be in the first place." He kisses my hand once again. "The difference between me and Mark is that I'll never let you give up on what you want to do. I want you to be what you wanna be and if you make more money than me then so be it." He shrugs his shoulders. "Shit, I'll quit my job once you become an actuary and you can take care of me. You can be my Sugar Mama." He winks at me.

"Shut up…I hate you." He finally gets a smile out of me. I lean towards him and despite the lipstick on my lips, I give him a long, drowned out kiss. When I say that I hate him, I really mean I love him…but I don't think I have to tell Alex that much. I'm pretty sure he knows that my "I hate you"s are actually "I love you"s. As we're kissing, everyone around the table starts cooing at us and yelling "woo!", which makes Alex smile through our kiss, lift his hand up and give everyone the middle finger…all the while never breaking the kiss. I pull away and put my head against his shoulder, smiling at everyone. Lyla's tongue is sticking out and her nose is tuned up, Alex's sister has her "aww" face on, his brother is giving him a round of applause and both Jimmy and Michelle are shaking their heads.

Alex's sister leans down to Lyla's ear and whispers something to her. As soon as she pulls away, Lyla puts her phone down and yells at us. "Get a room! Wiff a door! And lock it!"

"Shut up, Lyla." Alex waves his hand at her like he's shrugging her off.

Amber leans down and whispers something in her ear once more. Yet again, Lyla repeats it. "You shut up, daddy."

"Aunt Amber's going to get you an early bedtime." He retorts.

When the two of them get done bickering, the waitress brings our food over to our table and starts dishing out the many plates. I do feel like a bum and I have been feeling this way for quite some time now, but I'm going to suck it up for today. Because this is a celebratory lunch for Lyla, Alex finally got her back and today is going to be a good day.

No promises about tomorrow, though.


	57. All In All

**A/N:** **M** rated language in this chapter.

* * *

I lean back with my weight fully resting on my elbows and gaze out into the horizon, watching seagulls fly over the water and the sunlight glisten on the waves that are forming off in the distance. For the last three and a half weeks, all I wanted to do is take my daughter home and not have to worry about when the next time I was going to see her was going to be. I just wanted to be home with her, carefree and happy like our lives deserve to be. All I wanted to do is wake up with her in my house in the morning and have her with me when she fell asleep at night. Now that I'm actually able to do that, home feels like a place of constraint and dismantled freedom. Sitting here on this beach looking out into the water that seems to go on forever, I realize that we're finally free and I must say, it's a damn good feeling. I can take my daughter and fly across the country if I want to. I can take her outside to play in our backyard without worrying about someone catching us, I can take her to McDonald's for lunch and an afternoon of playing in the Play Place there. Hell, I can bring her to the damn beach again. We're free. We don't have to go home if we don't want to and good thing because for some reason, I don't really want to go there. It's sad because for Lyla, that's all she wants to do. All she wants to do is go home and sleep in her own bed with her own pillows and her own blankets. She wants to run around her bedroom and play and wake up in her own house. But for me, that house has been nothing but a jail cell. Nothing but a place where I had to keep her all holed up and locked up, in hopes that no one would come and see us there.

As I watch my daughter barefoot and stomping through the squishy sand on the shore, deep in conversation with my beautiful girlfriend who's standing right beside her, I don't even bother to fight the grin from snaking its way across my face. I get to go home with both my girls and that's a wonderful feeling. In all seriousness, it's a feeling that I never thought I would feel again. I never thought I'd be able to sit back on the beach and say that I get to go home with both my girls ever again. We didn't come to the beach to swim or enjoy a frolic through the water. We came to the beach because for one, I didn't want to go back to the house when we still had so many hours left of this day to waste and for two, Aaron and Ambs haven't been to Millerton's beach in years and Pop thought that it would be a good idea to bring them back to where they spent their childhood before they have to go back to their respective lives tomorrow. My dad and Michelle made their way back to the boardwalk restaurant and they're off eating somewhere, I don't know where Aaron disappeared to but Amber is down closer to the shore with Jo and Lyla.

I hear footsteps nearing towards me and from the corner of my eye, I see sand sloshing outward, which lets me know that someone is in fact approaching me. As soon as I see the feet of the person approaching me, I don't even have to look up to see who it is. I'd recognize those overgrown toenails and the elongated big toe anywhere. I used to wash between those ugly toes when we were younger because he had a fungus when he was five from not washing properly and ever since then, I washed his feet for him. His feet were just as ugly then as they are now. "This place still looks the same as it did back when we were kids." He plops down in the sand right next to me and puts his bottle of water down in the space between us. He leans back, buries his elbows in the sand and assumes the same position as me. "You don't ever get tired of being in the same place? Tired of looking at this exact same beach?" I shake my head and continue to watch as Jo grabs Lyla's hands and hoists her up so they can do the special little flip thing that she taught Lyla how to do the last time we were all at the beach. Jo holds Lyla's hands tight, Lyla walks up the front of Jo's body and Jo helps her do a neat little flip…and Lyla loves it. That's their own special thing they do together. "…Where'd you meet her at?"

"Huh?" I snap out of the trance that watching Lyla and Jo interact always puts me in and actually tune into what my brother is saying.

"Her…where'd you meet her at?" He motions towards Jo with his head and starts burying his feet deeper in the sand. "She's hot….and way outta your league, dude. Where'd you find her and are there more where she came from?"

"Don't talk about her like that." I mumble under my breath and draw my attention back to Jo. She is pretty damn hot, if I do say so myself. She still has the beige pencil skirt she wore to the court hearing on but her jacket and her heels are sitting in the sand next to where I'm sitting. She took her hair out of the ponytail she had it up in and it's flowing and blowing in the wind and all her lipstick wore off but she's still donning the rest of her makeup. "I met her when she moved here." I start talking to Aaron, still absolutely mesmerized by the way of my girlfriend. She's wearing a skirt and an expensive looking white blouse, yet she's romping through the shallow water with my daughter. "She's from Massachusetts. She moved here at the end of May and she lived right down the street from me. That's how we met. And she's an only child, so no…there's not more where she came from."

"…You love her?" He turns his head so that he's facing me and changes his whole entire demeanor to something more serious. I turn my head too. On a different note, I must say that I really got shorted out of the good side of the Evans side of the genepool. I got the shitty brownish green eyes from the Karevs and Aaron and Amber were both blessed with the bright blue/green eyes from the Evans'. I was really shorted. Aaron and Amber have such nice, bright eyes and I've got the shit ones. "I mean you must…to a certain extent, right? You allow her to be around Lyles, so there's gotta be some kind of love there…right?"

"…Yeah." I nod my head and turn it back towards the beach. Lyla is on Jo's hip now and Jo's taking her a little bit deeper into the water and pointing at things; probably some kinds of fish because she just loves teaching Lyla new things and Lyla loves showing off what she already knows. My four year old can already identify the species of fish that swim around in the tide pools, due to the fact that I bought her a big, thick book that's filled with pictures of every animal species in it. "It was kind of hard not to…fall in love with her, I mean. She's great with my kid and that's always a big bonus. But she's kind of…she's kind of amazing, Air." For lack of better wording…the only word I could come up with to describe Jo is amazing. That just about covers everything. "I'm not really the type that thinks that love comes easily, because it doesn't. It takes months to realize when you love someone but with her, it only took a few weeks. There's so many things to love about her. She made it hard to not fall in love with her and I'm still falling every day."

"You've gone soft on me, man." He shakes his head as if he's ashamed of me. I roll my eyes and slap the palm of my hand against his arm. "Ouch! Man, I'm just saying…" He sits up straight and holds the spot on his arm that I slapped. See, this is why I don't ever want to tell people about the way I'm feeling, especially when it comes to Jo. Even my brother thinks I've gone soft. I'm not soft, I just know what it's like to lose someone that you love and I know what it's like to actually be in love with a girl. I'm not soft. "The girl's got you whipped…you're whipped, Alex. You didn't even talk about Jenna like that. What's so different about this chick?"

"I dunno." I shrug my shoulders and watch a small speck of sand become tangled in my leg hairs. "I think _she's_ the thing that's different. It's a totally different thing from Jenna." I don't even bother shooting him down for saying that I'm whipped because I already know I am. I'd never willingly admit it to anyone but yeah…I'm whipped. Jo just does it to me. "She's not Jenna and that's different. It's something completely…" I sigh. I don't know how to explain to him what I'm trying to say. "I just think maybe Jenna wasn't you know…the one. And she is. Simple as that." I clear my throat. My brother is completely silent which in most cases would mean that the person has nothing to say but in Aaron's case, it means that he doesn't understand. I'm not saying that my brother is stupid because all of us Karevs are somewhat intelligent but yeah…Aaron's the stupid one out of us all. If you don't explain things to him in layman's terms, he just won't get it. If you want him to understand something, you have to explain it to him in a way that he'll understand it otherwise he just won't get it. I swear we should've gotten him tested for some sort of mental retardation. I mean that in the most respectful way possible, too. "…I was falling in love with her before we even had sex, Aaron. It's not the cookie that made me fall in love, I already fell before that."

His eyebrows raise and his head tilts back slightly, which is a direct indication that he understands what I'm trying to say about Jo being special. It's a shame that he only understands things if you oversimplify them and water them down. I hate to say it but my brother really is stupid. "…So she's not letting you hit it?" He looks at me again, eyebrow raised this time. I close my eyes and just shake my head. I never said that. "What the hell are you with her for then? Isn't that…kind of the point?" I can't do anything else but shake my head at him. And the sad thing is…he really is that shallow. He's got a lot of growing up to do but that goes without saying. He thinks the sun rises and sets on his ass and his main goal is to get laid. I'll try not to judge him too hard on that though. He is 22 after all. "Is she one of those 'save it for marriage' types? She doesn't look like one but…damn, that must suck."

"If you would listen with your ears half as much as you run that damn mouth of yours, you'd know that I never said we weren't having sex." Me and Aaron used to talk about sex an awful lot but that's because we're brothers. I was young back in that day too and getting laid was primarily my only goal. I don't like to think that Aaron learned from me but he kind of did. Me and Jenna's relationship was quite off and on and during our off times, I used to get so much ass. Aaron started having sex at 12 years old and he would tell me all about his adventures and I'd tell him all about mine…it's just the way we were. In retrospect, 12 years old is way too young to even be thinking about sex but like I said, I was young back then and I didn't have my head on straight. Me today would without a doubt tell my little brother to go play video games instead of trying to stick his piece everywhere. "Of course we're having sex. But what I'm saying is that I started loving her way before we even started. The sex had nothing to do with it."

"Oh…" He nods his head slowly. "She really is special then." He sounds surprised, which makes me roll my eyes. Someday he'll learn. I like to think that someday my baby brother will settle down, get married and give me nieces and/or nephews. Pop didn't raise us to be dogs. In a sense, I guess me and Aaron are kind of assholey but it's not the way we were raised to be. Pop didn't exactly raise us to be respectful for ALL women…he just taught us to be respectful to our mother and that we should treat our wives like queens. He never went into specifics on how we should treat our girlfriends but that comes with experience. Like I said, we weren't raised to be dogs but back in my younger days, I was just as much an asshole as my brother is. At least Amber turned out alright. As far as I know, she's not whoring around and giving it up to everyone. I'd like to think that I'm the reason Amber turned out to be a respectable lady. Mom was usually whacked out of her mind and dad worked an awful lot to support us so in some ways, I kind of became the parent. I was 11 when Amber was born so I was capable of taking care of her. By the time she got old enough to experiment with makeup, I was around to tell her not to act like a hoe and treat her how to be so that men would respect her. Hell, I was so involved in my siblings' lives that I even taught Aaron how to shave his face and I taught Ambs how to stick a pad in her underwear. I had to read the directions on the back of the box about thirteen times before I was able to show her how to do it. As far as I know, my life lessons worked on her. She seems commendable. "…So what _is_ the sex like?" I wince a little bit when he asks that and I don't even know why I do because I knew that was coming. I knew he was going to ask. "Is she wild? She looks wild…she's got that whole 'lady' thing going on but I bet she's a freak…is she a freak?" I glare at him from the corner of my eye. "What's the pussy like? Come on, tell me." I close my eyes and shake my head yet again. That's all I can do to Aaron sometimes is shake my head. There's nothing to say and nothing to do. I just have to shake my head. I raised Amber right. Where did I go wrong with him? "Alex, come on…like old times. Just tell me."

"It's good…okay, Air?" I open my eyes and look at him. "It's good. Sweaty, hot and dirty. It's good." He looks dumbfounded. And despite the fact that Aaron always looks dumb no matter what, I know that this type of look means that he's dissatisfied. I roll my eyes up to the sky and again, I wonder where I went wrong with him. But he's not going to leave me alone until I give him details…and I guess maybe I'm entitled to one moment of brother-to-brother bonding time with him. After all, this is how we used to bond when we were younger. I haven't seen him in a while and I did miss him…and I do want to have laughs like we used to…and talking about Jo in bed doesn't mean that I don't respect her because anyone with eyes can see that I do. I respect her. And I _have_ been wanting to gush over the sex for a very long time. I don't have other people around that I can talk about the sex with and believe me, I NEED to talk about the sex. The sex is great. He's my brother…it's not like I'm talking to some random guy off the street about what goes on in the bedroom. Besides, I'm sure Jo told all her little waitress friends about us. I'm sure of that. "Well…she gives good head, that's for sure. Her head's…her head is vicious. Pays attention to the balls…And she swallows…perfect blowjob skills. Perfect."

"I knew it. She looks like a freak. She looks like the type that's all quiet and innocent until you get her in bed. She a screamer? Tell me she's a screamer." He's prying for even more details and of course, I'm going to give them to him but I'm going to limit it. He doesn't need to know every little thing. I'll give him the basics. I shake my head fast. "She's not a screamer? Bummer." His shoulders slouch. "…Well is she a creamer?" I shake my head to that too and he gasps. "SQUIRTER?!"

"Shh, keep it down!" I glance back at the shore to see if she heard. She's still pretty busy with my daughter so I don't think she heard anything. "…She can do both…it depends on me, really. I ate her out one night and had to change the sheets 'cause she squirted everywhere. But the first time we had sex she just creamed. But the second time we did…like a week ago or something, she squirted again. The second time we had sex, she squirted. So she can do both but it depends on me. I'm thinking the rough stuff makes her squirt but the slow stuff she's just…not into it as much and she doesn't do it then. I can kind of tell when she's going to do what. The slow, boring stuff she's just not into it much and the orgasm isn't really…much to squirt about, you know?" I try my best to explain that. "And she can be a screamer but again, it depends. She's more of the silent, low moaning kind but I had her screaming the one night. Top of her lungs, too."

"And what about you? She make you say or do anything crazy? It's not good sex until the girl makes you talk dirty…any of that?" He asks. If I tell him that I have said some pretty dirty things to her during the table sex, it's going to lead to me telling him that she called me that thing she never wants me to repeat and I don't want to repeat it, so… I shrug my shoulders. "Well at least tell me that it's tight. Tell me it's tight…tell me it's not like humping air. I've had a couple of those and I ended up with blue balls…and lemme tell you, I'd rather have blue balls than have sex with a girl that's not tight. It's just…it defeats the whole purpose."

"Of course it's tight. It's tight as hell." I smirk to myself. Honestly, talking about the sex with Jo is just making me more excited for tonight. She already promised me lots of celebration sex and I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to putting her in so many crazy positions. Ooh, I can't wait until later on tonight. "Wet too." I add that, just to brag and rub it in a little. It's a brotherly teasing kind of thing. It's like "haha, I have sex with this and you don't". It's just how us brothers are. "She never dries out…ever. Even after we're done, she's still dripping. It splashes and everything…all up on my stomach. It's so wet…" I could get hard just thinking about it but I possess some kind of restraint and I control myself. "…You ever have one so good that you have to think about something else so you don't bust within seconds? That's me with her. I'll get the tip in and I'm already telling myself to concentrate on the fucking paint on the wall so I don't bust. The other night, I had to switch positions so many times just to last. I had her on her back first and that wasn't working so I closed her legs and that only made it tighter so I opened them again and tried to sing a damn song in my head to distract myself but when that didn't work, I just gave up and bent her over. It's good, dude. I'm telling you…it's mind-blowing. It's the kind that'll make a man go crazy…the kind that'll make you sit back and think about baby names because pulling out is NOT an option. And she's crazy with it too. Like the first time we went at it, I tried to pull out. I was gonna go and eat it so I didn't bust early but she wrapped her legs around my waist and she would not let me take it out. So I ended up just busting." I shrug my shoulders. I'm so excited for tonight. Matter of a fact, I want to go home. Right now.

"You're cool with getting her pregnant?" The smile on his face is so smug; like he's happy he's getting all these details. I didn't mean to give him that many details but I couldn't stop for a second there. You know how when something good happens to you, you just wanna go and tell the world all about it? It's kind of like that. I got so carried away. "You're for real cool with knocking her up? Even though you've only been together for what? A few months?"

"…I'm not though. I'm _not_ cool with knocking her up. I don't want to get her pregnant and if I did, I'd be so pissed off with myself but…I mean…In that moment…" I start stumbling over my words.

"…It's that kind of pussy that makes you act now and think later, huh?" He says exactly what I wanted to say, which makes me laugh so hard that I have to hold my stomach muscles. I nod my head, mid laugh and just hold my stomach. "I've had some of that, bro. I completely understand. Some of it is just so good that you're like…'fuck it, I'll be a dad' but when you bust and pull it out after the fact, you sit there and you're like 'this bitch better not be pregnant.' You're cool with knocking the chick up while you're hitting it but afterwards, you're like NO."

I can't stop laughing. "Yeah but…luckily for me, she can't get knocked up so I can bust in it all I want."

"The pill?" He asks.

"Something like that." I still retain a little bit of my sense. I wouldn't tell Aaron about Jo's accident. It's not my place to tell him about her and ultimately, it's none of his business.

"…On a serious note though." Once he catches his breath from laughing so hard, he's back to speaking normally. "Do you think maybe she's going to be the next one you marry? Should I be expecting an invite to the wedding?"

"I don't know." When it's clear that we're done talking about sex, I look out at the shore for another time. The bottom of Jo's skirt is soaking wet and Lyla's clothes are hanging off her body from the heaviness of the water weighing them down. Lyla's running around in the water and splashing Jo and Jo's laughing hysterically and trying to shield herself from the water. "It's too soon to say it. I'm just trying to enjoy what we are right now, you know? I don't want there to be any pressure to get married someday. I just want to be with her for right now and as long as I'm with her, I don't care if we ever do get married. Marriage is overrated sometimes. It's just way too soon to tell if I'm going to marry her yet. We're still getting to know what it's like living together." Lyla looks like she's having the time of her life out there with Jo. "I know one thing though…I'd like to keep her around for Ly."

"She seems great. She seems like she wants to be with Lyles just as much as she wants to be with you." He leans back again and starts watching the same thing I'm watching. "I want that someday." He mumbles that last part, clearly because he's Aaron and he doesn't want me to think that he's soft. I don't think he's soft though. I don't think that wanting a family and kids someday makes a man soft. I reach over and put my hand on his shoulder. I'm actually proud of him for that. I'm proud that he realizes that he wants to grow up and get married someday. I take my hand away from his shoulder though, when I see Amber walking up the beach and heading straight for me and Aaron. "Amber Alert." He mumbles under his breath, which makes me smirk. We used to say that when we were kids and we thought we were so clever because Amber Alerts are real things. Amber finally makes her way over to us and she collapses in the stand, head first so she's laying on her stomach. "Look what the ocean washed up." She flicks Aaron off when he says that and he reaches forward and messes her hair up.

"Scale of 1-10 Alex, how much do you like your girlfriend?" She picks up Aaron's bottle of water and starts unscrewing the cap. "Because if you don't like her, I love her enough for the both of us." I wrinkle my brow and look at her. It's funny she'd say that she likes Jo because the two of them have only spoken once—and that was when I introduced them. They didn't even speak to each other and Amber loves her? "Isn't she a little young for you though?"

"She's 29…I'm only 30. How is she too young?"

"She's 29!?" Her jaw drops. I just nod my head slowly. She's been around Aaron for too long. Some of his dumbness is rubbing off on her. "She looks so young though! My god…what fountain of youth is she drinking from?" She turns her head around and looks at Jo. "I thought she was like 20…21 at best." She looks back at me. "…No offense, but how do you not break her when you have sex? She's a stick."

"She's bigger than she looks…it's the skirt. She's actually pretty thick. You should see her ass." I lick my lips at the thought of Jo's ass and Amber tunes her nose up. "…How would you know that you like her anyway, Ambs? You haven't even talked to her."

"We were talking down there a little bit. I just asked her how she met you. She has a nice voice so I'm guessing she's a nice person. My little ladybug seems to like her a lot and you know Lyla's an excellent judge of character." She flips her blonde hair over her shoulder. "Dad's been telling us a lot about her too. If dad likes her, she must be cool." Well I'm glad everyone seems to approve of Jo. Not that I would really care if they didn't like her, but it's always nicer when the family actually gets along with your significant other. I can honestly say that I wouldn't care if my brother and sister didn't like Jo. I won't lie; for a second there, I thought they wouldn't like her. My entire family just loved Jenna to death and I thought for sure that once they met Jo, they wouldn't like her. But if they didn't, that wouldn't change the way I feel about her. Not that she's more important than my family, it's just that she's not exactly FOR THEM to like. She's for me to like and as long as I like her, they'd have to deal with her. Amber sits up, brushes her shirt free of sand and sits beside me. "It's nice that you found someone that's good with Lyla."

"Yeah." I watch as Jo hoists Lyla up on her hip and starts walking up our way. The both of them are soaking wet. Lyla's still giggling for some reason and Jo's still sporting a smile but she's more serious than Lyla is. I think Jo's tired of being wet. She clearly didn't think she was going to get soaking wet the way she did but I know she fell under Lyla's spell. My daughter is very persuasive when she wants to be and it's almost impossible to say no to her, especially once she starts smiling. The two of them approach me, Aaron and Amber and Jo puts her down once they get close enough to us. Lyla comes over to us but Jo stays right where she's standing and starts wringing out her hair. "Didn't I tell you that we weren't swimming today, Lyla?" Even though she's wet, I still stick my hands under her armpits and pick her up. "Didn't I?"

"Mama said I could so I did." Dripping wet, she stands on my lap and starts petting my hair. She's shivering like a dog but she won't even admit that she's cold or anything. "Her said we's only goin' home so I could get wet." Her little teeth start chattering. I have to get her home before she gets sick. "Daddy…when we go home…maybe we could play on the Wii. Huh?"

"Anything you want." I put my lips to her ice cold cheek and help her off my lap. She runs immediately back to Jo and starts tugging on her skirt. "You guys leaving tonight?" I ask Aaron and Ambs. They both nod their hands. Amber's going back to Miami and I'm not even sure where Aaron's going. "Are you guys riding home with dad? Because we're about to head home. I wanna get her out of her clothes before she gets sick." I stand up and brush sand off my ass. Neither one of them answer me. Both of them are way too busy looking behind me to even pay attention to what I just asked them. "What?" I turn around to see what they're looking at. They're watching Jo and Lyla for the billionth time today. I don't know why they're so fascinated with the way Jo interacts with her. All she's doing is holding Lyla's hands and making her dance along to the song that's playing on the speakers on the boardwalk. It's not that big of a deal.

"Oh! Sherrie! Our love! Holds on! Holds on!" Jo's singing to her and making her dance in rhythm to the beat of the song but Lyla's laughing so hard that she can hardly even hold her head upright. "Come on, baby." Jo picks her up on her hip again. "Clap…go…Oh, Sherrie…our love…holds on. Holds on…" Lyla starts clapping, totally off beat but Jo's still encouraging it. "You like this song?" Lyla nods her head, knowing damn well she doesn't know anything about Oh Sherrie. That's before my time and WAY before Lyla's time. I'm surprised Jo even knows anything about Oh Sherrie. I mean, the only reason I do is because Steve Perry was my dad's freaking idol but still…it's an old song. But more amazing than the fact that Jo even knows the song is the fact that she has Lyla laughing and dancing with her. That's such a motherly thing for her to do, I think. Jenna was the ONLY one Lyla ever danced with. "I think daddy wants to go home now…you ready to go home?"

"Yep." Lyla smashes Jo's cheeks together and Jo wiggles her lips like a fish when she does. Lyla puckers her lips up and pecks Jo right on her fish lips. "You comin' home too…right?"

"Mhm." Jo scoots her up on her hip and walks toward me. "I'm cold and I am wet…can we go home?" She asks me.

Home. I'm still not used to hearing her refer to my home as her home. It's a good feeling to hear that. "Yeah."

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"Get up, Alex." I stand in front of him while he sits his lazy ass on the couch and cross my arms. "If I have to do this, so do you." I drop a black Wii remote in his lap and tap my foot impatiently. Lyla taps me on my leg to see if we're going to join her. "One second, baby. Daddy's being lazy." I grab Alex's hand and drag him up off the couch. "If I have to do this, so do you!" Lord knows I don't want to do this but Lyla asked specifically for us to play with her and neither one of us could say no. She babbled about it all the way home from the beach. I was hoping that the water from the beach would have tired her out and she would've fallen asleep on the way home, that way I could've gotten out of this. But nope. Alex and I dragged her in the house, gave her a bath, took showers ourselves, ordered Chinese takeout for dinner and we tried to put on a movie for her but she wasn't having it. She grabbed three Wii remotes, set the game up and asked me and Alex if we would play with her. Alex sat his lazy ass right on the couch and he has no interest in getting up. But he's GOING to get up if I have to beat his ass off this couch. "Go 'head and pick a song, baby…daddy's coming." If I have to do this and make a fool out of myself, he's going to do it too. "Get…up…" I pull him hard. "Now."

"Fine, fine…fine." He sighs hard and gets up. He adjusts his pajama pants and stands where the coffee table used to be. If the three of us are going to play this game, we needed some extra room. I moved the coffee table to the corner of the living room so we have extra room. Alex turns on his Wii remote and nonchalantly stands in his place. "I don't even know how to play this." He grumbles. I nudge him with my elbow to make him have a more positive attitude. I don't want to do this either. I've never played this either. I tried to get her to play Super Mario Brothers or Mario Kart because I've actually played those two games before but she INSISTED that we play her dancing game. I think I'm partially to blame for that. I made her dance on the beach and she's been on a dancing kick ever since. "I seriously don't know how to play this."

"Neither do I. How much you wanna bet Lyla kicks both our asses?" I turn on my Wii remote too. Like a little professional, Lyla pushes her button and starts the game after she picks a song. "What song did you pick, honey? Did you pick a good one?"

"Uh-huh. I pick…pick um…Tell me wanna." She pushes the button on her remote again and the damn game doesn't even give us a moment before it even starts. It just goes right to it and Lyla goes right to kicking me and Alex's asses.

"Wait…we started?" I watch the screen and try to imitate the moves the person on the screen is doing. I stomp my foot and shake my chest, stomp my foot, shake my chest again. "Lyla, you could've at least told us how to play!" Her little score bar is so much higher than me and Alex's. Her dance moves are getting comments like "great!", "super!" and "wow!" while I'm getting a bunch of "ok"s and Alex is getting nothing but Xs. I point my remote at the TV, bring it back to my chest and start swaying my hips. I do it again the next time the lyrics say, "If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends." I think I'm getting the hang of it. I'm starting to get a few "great!"s . I stomp my foot, shake my chest and sway my hips again. Since Lyla's not paying attention to us, I take a second and look at Alex. He's really trying and that in itself is HILARIOUS. He points his arm towards the TV, touches his chest and starts shaking his butt and I have to seriously hold back laughter because if he knows I'm laughing at him, he'll stop. He turns to the side like the person on TV says to, puts his hands on his knees and literally pops his butt and I can't. I flop down on the couch, bury my face in the cushions and have a MUCH needed laugh.

"Shut the fuck up, Jo." He mumbles at me through clenched teeth. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I lift my head up and look at him. He's doing the stomping, shaking chest thing. I clamp my hand over my mouth and squeal. "At least I'm trying! What are you doing?! Sitting there!" He does the butt pop thing again and I just lose it. I put a couch pillow over my face and shriek into it. He should see himself! His knees are barely bent, his hands are on them and he looks more like he's having a seizure than popping his ass.

"I'm sorry, I can't…I can't…." I shake my head. I'm in literal tears right now. I can't believe this. The song ends and I can finally take the pillow away. He's glaring at me like he wants to kill me. "I'm so sorry…you should've seen yourself. You really should've seen yourself…oh my god."

"…I hate you." He tosses the remote on the couch next to me and shakes his head. "You made me do this and then you make fun of me…"

"I WINNED! I WINNED, LOOKY!" Lyla starts jumping up and down and pointing at the TV. "LOOKY DADDY!"

"I see!" He changes his tone to something more kid friendly. "And mommy came in dead last, would you look at that…"

"You should've seen yourself. You would've died too. You would've cracked up laughing." I start wiping away tears. "Oh my goodness…thank you. Thank you for that, Alex. Thank you. I needed a laugh like that."

"I hope you stub your pinky toe." He squints at me. "Hard, too."

 **X X X**

Once she's finally asleep, I turn out her lamp and quietly tiptoe out of her bedroom. Me and Alex were allowing her to stay up for as long as she wanted to stay up for since today's such a special day for her but she tapped out at 11:30 sharp. We played a couple rounds of that dancing game until the food came and after dinner, she talked me and Alex into playing Mario Kart. She kicked our asses in that too—even after we stopped letting her win. When she got bored with Mario Kart, Alex put in Frozen and she sat through the entire movie, which surprised me. He went to go put in Big Hero 6 and she was falling asleep half an hour into that movie so we decided it was time to put her to sleep. She had a long day. On my way out the door, I glance at her to make sure she is indeed sleeping. Her head is on her pink pillow, Lionel is shoved underneath her arm and she's buried deep under her blankets. "Goodnight, sweetie." I whisper as I shut her door. I think my first day as a domestic mother thing went alright. I gave Lyla a bath when we got home so Alex could clean up the downstairs. I put her in her pajamas, brushed her hair and played with her. I made her dinner plate and made sure she ate well. I tucked her into bed and did the whole "kiss goodnight" thing. I think I did alright.

I must admit that this is just a little bit more than I bargained for. I think I get what Alex meant when he kept asking me if I could handle it. I thought he was just being annoying and overprotective but I see now that he was only trying to make sure that I knew what I was getting myself into…and I'm not sure I fully understood. I am sort of feeling like I'm drowning a bit. It's like standing in the ocean and having waves hit you, in a sense. I'm standing in the middle of the ocean and moving in with him was one wave that hit me. It was a pretty big wave but it broke over me and I'm fine. Being alone in the house while he's at work actually making money was another wave…and that wave was bigger and it actually knocked me down. And when I finally found the strength to pick myself back up and start standing, a four year old child was thrust in the middle of it and that wave took me down before I even got the chance to get back on my feet. I'm down again and I'm scared to get up.

I love Alex to death and I love Lyla too but this is just a little bit much for me. I've barely adjusted to actually living with him and suddenly, I've found myself responsible for a small child as well. I always wanted to be a mom. I always wanted a baby to take care of…a baby that I could love, cuddle, nurture, coddle and raise but whoa. It kind of feels like I was thrown into the middle of it. It kind of feels like someone drop kicked me in the deep end of the pool and told me to swim. I don't know the first thing about being a mother and I'm suddenly faced with the responsibility of being one. I'm not even sure how to handle living with Alex yet. I mean, it's not really much of a big deal. It's the same thing we've been doing only we're around each other 24/7 now and we actually live together. But I haven't really adjusted to actually living with someone else yet. I haven't gotten the hang of how he does things around his house just yet and now Lyla's here and I have to take care of her too when he's at work. I just…I feel…

I stumble into the bathroom and shut the door behind myself. I clasp my hand over my chest and take a few deep breaths before this escalates into an anxiety attack. I'm just a little overwhelmed here. I have a good idea of how to be a wife and a companion to a man because I've been there and done that. But I've never been a wife and a mother and this is the kind of life I'm going to be living from today on. I'm living here, which basically means I'm partially in charge of caring for Lyla and I don't know if I can do that. I can't make lunches and pack bookbags. I've never been a mother before. I used to do it. I used to be here for Alex and here for Lyla and I used to mother her and support him at the same time. But it's different now because I had a house to run to when things got tough. I had a house to go to when I was sick of playing house with Alex and his kid. I'm not playing house anymore. I actually live here and it's becoming so surreal. I can't do both. I mean, I CAN but…I can't. I can't do both… I guess I could just take it a day at a time.

I never wanted to live here in the first place. I didn't want to move in. I wanted to stay in my own house. I wanted to keep my job. I only moved in here to make him happy. He wanted me to quit and I did. I wanted to quit too but not at that very moment. I didn't want to move. I didn't want to move in here with him. I only did this to make him happy. He wanted me to quit and I did but I wanted to stay in my house but he didn't want me to. HOW IS HE DIFFERENT FROM MARK?! I did all of this to make him happy. I didn't want to… I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to do it and now I can't do it. I CAN'T DO THIS. I rest my back against the door and hold my heart, which is beating way too fast. I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth. In through my nose, out through my mouth. Snap out of it, Jo. You can do this. It's okay. You're fine. Quitting was for the best and you know it was. He only wanted what was best for you and this is what's best. One day at a time. One day at a time and you'll get the hang of it. You're fine. Snap out of it. Pull your head out of your ass and calm down. You can do this. You've been doing it. Just keep doing it. You're fine.

I take another deep breath once I've got myself all the way calm and walk over to the toilet to do what I came in here to do in the first place. I'm fine. I had a little mini panic attack but I'm fine. I'm quite alright. I can do this. I was just freaking myself out. Before I sit down on the toilet, I kneel down beneath the sink and grab the box of tampons I stuck underneath of there when I moved all my crap in here last week. I grab a super plus sized one and pop it out of the wrapper. I weasel my underwear down and check the base to make sure I didn't make a mess of myself. I came on it when we got home from the beach earlier and it kind of explains a bunch. It explains why I was so pissy at the court hearing and why I was in a shit mood at the restaurant afterwards. I do my business on the toilet and take care of myself. I take the old one out, wipe myself, pop a new one in, pull my pants up, flush the toilet, look after myself since I'm living with a man now, scrub my hands clean and that's the end of it. I look at myself in the mirror to make sure there's no evidence of my mini breakdown, turn the light out and leave the bathroom.

I go into Alex's room—err, me and Alex's room—and walk right over to the bed. He's laying on top of the quilt with his feet propped up, flicking through channels on the TV. "What time are you trying to go up to Pensacola tomorrow?" I sit at the edge of the bed and take my socks off so I can get into the bed. I'm actually having a little bit of cramps right now and I'm tired so all I want to do is go to bed. "How early are you talking?"

"Probably around 10:00. I was thinking we could go grab some breakfast tomorrow morning before we go shopping and job hunting." He turns on Ridiculousness and puts the remote down. I pull the blankets back and get underneath of them. Breakfast sounds good. "So, I was thinking…" He turns towards me. "Why don't you just be a stay at home…mom or whatever while you go back to school?" Is he serious? "You could stay here and look after the house and after Lyla while you go back to school to be an actuary. What do you think?"

"…No?" I narrow my eyes and just look at him. "I don't want to do that, Alex. I don't want to be your maid. I don't want to be at home all day, cooking, cleaning, watering the frickin' garden and tending to the plants. I don't want to do that."

"Jo, you're not my maid. I'm just saying you could focus on school. That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying you'd be a maid." He puts his hand on my shoulder. "Sorry if that's what you thought I was implying."

"I want to contribute something. I don't want to sit on my ass all day and do nothing. I don't want you to feel like you have to take care of me. I don't want to be taken care of. I just want to contribute something…even if it's just putting gas in my own car. I want to act like a functional member of the household. I feel so low right now because you do everything. You go to work, bring home the bacon…and I don't do anything but make sure you have clean underwear and a hot meal when you get home. I don't want to be the lonely housewife. I want a life too."

"Alright." He nods his head. "Okay. That's fair." He rubs my shoulder. "It was just a suggestion." He kisses me on my cheek. I sigh and wrap my arm around his body. "…So…you in the mood yet or do I gotta put you in the mood?" He kisses my cheek again, softer this time and more sensual. I wrinkle my brows. In the mood for what? "…You remember…" He moves from my cheek to my neck. "You promised lots of…." He kisses my neck. "Hot, celebration sex…"

"…Aw shit." I whisper to myself and he can tell that it wasn't a good "shit" so his face snaps up out of my neck. First of all, I forgot. Second of all, I'm riding the cotton cowboy right now. Now I feel bad because I did. I really promised him lots of sex and I kind of wanted to have sex at the time too. That's another thing explained by my period. I always get so horny when I'm about to come on it. I should've guessed. "…Not tonight, baby." I put my hand on his cheek. "I'm sorry." I apologize sincerely. He's looking at me like I just denied him the basic right to breathe. I forgot all about the sex so I didn't even think to tell him that I'm on my period. I live with a man now so I've been really trying to be clean with my womanly. I took a shower and made sure I didn't leave traces of anything in the shower, I made sure the toilet was all clean and I threw the tampon wrapper away in the downstairs trashcan so he didn't have to look at it. I've been trying to be clean with it so I didn't tell him but if I had remembered that we were supposed to have sex, I would've told him the second I saw the crimson tide in my underwear earlier. "Not tonight, okay? I'm so sorry. Not tonight though."

"Why?" He puts his hand on my stomach and he seriously looks like he might cry. "I was so excited for it…I was thinking about it on the beach and…and I had this new thing I wanted to try where you're on your stomach and…" He's so disappointed and I feel horrible. I feel so bad. I understand his pain because if I was looking forward to some good sex all day, only to find out that I wasn't allowed to get it, I'd be pissed. I'd have the biggest attitude if he ever denied me some dick. "Are you not in the mood? Because I can get you in the mood…" He moves in to kiss my neck again and his hand moves from my stomach to my vagina and I reach down and move it. "Lemme get you in the mood…please. You promised."

"It's not the mood that's the problem, honey." I start stroking his hair. I feel so, so, so bad for him right now. I did. I set him up so bad. I set him up, thinking he was going to have the world's best sex and here…I feel so bad. "It's not the mood."

"Then what is it?" He lifts my shirt up a little and starts untying the drawstrings to my pajama shorts. I squeeze my thighs together and move his hands away from me again. "Jooooo!" He slams his head down into the pillow and sighs hard. I don't want to tell him that I'm on my period in case he thinks that's gross so I'm kind of just hoping that he'll catch my drift. "Why are you being mean? Why do you hate me?"

"I don't hate you and I'm not being mean." I keep rubbing his hair. With his face still in the pillow, he creeps his hand back to the middle of my body again and for the third time, I swat his hand away. "Alex." He lifts his head up and looks at me like he's really ready to burst into tears. "…I'm on my period, okay? So we can't…and I don't take anything up my ass like I told you, so there's really nothing I can do about it. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It happened when we got home from the beach." I just tell him and as soon as I do, his face falls.

"…What?" His voice is flat, no pitch at all in it.

"I'm on my period."

"…Huh?"

"My period? You know…that thing that happens to women when their uteruses aren't filled with a baby? Happens once a month for about seven days…or in my case, three thanks to the fact that my vagina and all its components are all effed up." He still says absolutely nothing. "You know…periods?"

"No!" He sounds so disappointed. "No, no, no, no, no! No!" He slams his face back in the pillow. "The world hates me!" I laugh a little bit.

"I'm sorry baby." I rub the back of his neck. "…Will you settle for a nice celebratory blowjob?"

He lifts his head up. "Nah, you don't have to." He seems really okay with it all of a sudden. "Not your fault someone's poisoned the waterhole." He lays his head on my chest instead. "No means no…alright?" He starts rubbing my hip very gently. "Don't ever feel like you need to look for other ways to please me. I can take no for an answer." My heart feels like it melted a little bit when he said that. He's so sweet for that. He knows damn well I'd go down on him in a heartbeat but he's still trying to be nice. He's so sweet; letting me know that he can take the word no. That just made me love him a little bit more. "I just haven't dealt with a period in a while…I kind of forgot they existed."

"I wish I could forget they exist. I have cramps like a bitch right now." I mumble. "…Let me up. I'm gonna go take some Midol." He lifts himself up from my chest so I can get up. "I'm going downstairs to get something to drink." I climb out of the bed and put my slippers on. "You want something?"

"No, I'm just gonna come with you." He gets out of the bed too. "I wanna grab some chips or something…" He follows me out of the bedroom and follows me to the steps. "There are still a couple Oreos in the package, right?"

"…No. I ate them earlier." I tell a boldfaced lie to him because I want those damn Oreos. I was going to grab them when I went downstairs. My heart was set on those Oreos and I'll be damned if I let him get them. "They're gone." I walk slowly down the steps due to my hips but he doesn't seem to mind. He knows I walk up and down steps slowly.

"…You're a damn liar. I saw them in the drawer before we came upstairs." He starts trying to go around me on the steps, so I put my arm out so he can't pass me. "Move, Jo! Those Oreos are mine!"

"NO! I'm on my period! I'm craving them! Lemme have them!" He starts trying to go underneath my arm, which makes me bust out in laughter. Alex has been making me laugh like crazy today. "Stop, I'm on my period!"

"You can't use that as an excuse for everything! There are vanilla ones in the pantry, go eat those ones!" He tries to move my arm but I lock it. He's NOT getting past me. Those Oreos are MINE. He can have the vanilla ones. Vanilla Oreos are garbage. "Jo, MOVE before I pick you up!" I stick my butt out and block him while I start slithering down the steps again. "Jo…I'm not even kidding. I will drop you on your head. Quit playing!" He's choking back laughter and trying so hard to be serious. I move down the steps one by one. "HOW OLD ARE YOU?!"

"Boy, how old are YOU?!" I keep my butt out and my arms on the walls, blocking him. "I called them! You go eat the vanilla ones. Vanilla Oreos are friggin' trash." We still have like seven more steps to get down but I'm being consistent. I want those damn Oreos. I want them with some milk real bad. He tries to go under me once again but he can't fit. "Try and squeeze under me one more time and I'm gonna fuck you up." I scoot down one more steps. Out of nowhere, he sticks his finger under my armpit and wiggles it around, trying to get me to move my arm. "You weirdo!" I have a momentary lapse of judgment for a second and I snatch my arm away from the wall, not fully realizing that more than half my body weight is being supported by that arm. So when I move that arm away, my weight is unevenly distributed and the other arm that's supporting the rest of my weight against the wall buckles, sending me backward.

"Wait, crap!" Alex tries to catch me before I fall but he's a little too late because he has to readjust his own weight so by the time he goes to put his arms out for me, I already collapse down on the steps pretty hard and slide down a couple of them before I catch myself with my arms. I hit the steps pretty hard too. I hit the steps way too hard. You know when you get hit in the middle of your back, there's that moment where you can't breathe and all the wind is knocked out of you? I start gasping to catch my breath. "Jo…you okay? I'm sorry." Alex starts to help me up by grabbing on my arms but I hit the steps ENTIRELY too hard.

"OUCH! STOP!" I don't mean to scream at him like that but I hit the steps way, way, way too hard. I really can't feel my legs right now. All I feel is excruciating, sharp, searing pains all through my hips. I can't breathe, it hurts so bad. My hips…my hips. I can't feel anything below my hips. All I feel is sharp pains all through them, dull and aching somewhat as well. Oh…my…GOD. It didn't even hurt this bad when I broke the damn thing. My hips hurt so bad. I can't even speak. I'm…I think I'm in shock. My stomach hurts. My stomach hurts so bad. Oh my god, I did something. I did something when I came down. My head is spinning in circles. I did something. I can't feel my legs. Everything from my hips down is just tingling and fuzzy. Alex tries picking me up again. "NO! NO! I don't wanna move…"

"Jo, you have to…" He starts running up the steps. When he stops running, the light comes on and he comes running back down to me. "I'm so sorry…I'm so sorry." He kneels down on the step next to me. "W…what's your pain like? 1-10?" He lifts up my shirt, the doctor part of him coming completely alive. "Be honest with me."

"T…" I can even speak, I feel like I need to throw up. "It's a ten…" I nod my head. "It's a ten…" I don't want to be taken to a hospital though. I just want to lie down. I need him to give me a moment to feel my legs again and I need him to help me upstairs to the bed and I need to lie down. I'm not going to the hospital. I don't have health insurance all like that, they're not billing me and they're NOT going to tell me that I need another surgery that's just going to cause me more pain. I really think I'm okay. I think I'm fine. I think I just hit right on a piece of the cartilage that's still in my hip. There's not much that they didn't replace with metal and I think I just so happened to hit that. "Please don't touch me right now, Alex…don't touch me."

"I'm so sorry." He keeps lifting my shirt even though I told him not to touch me. "I didn't mean to…" I feel something drip down on my stomach and that's when I realize he's shedding tears. Does he think he did this? "I would never hurt you, Jo…" It's not his fault, why's he crying? I mean…in a way, it could be his fault, but it's really not. He didn't know that tickling my armpit was going to cause me to fall. "I'm gonna make this okay, alright? I'm gonna call my dad…to come sit with Lyla and I'll get you to the hospital. I'm so sorry…I'm such an idiot. I'm sorry."

"…No…hospital." I shake my head. "I'm fine. I just need a moment." I take a few breaths. All in all, I'm having a pretty shitty day. I wanted to just go to sleep and have this shitty day be over but now. Of course, it had to be topped off by something. There just HAD to be a cherry on top of a shit sundae. I brace myself against the wall and try to pick myself up. Oh damn, that hurts. But I can stand. I'm alright. Alex grabs my arm and tries to help me up. "Mmmm…"

"I wanna examine you, Jo…just stay right here. Lemme look at you…" He rolls me gently to my side and lifts my shirt. "Lemme see…"

I should've just gone to bed and ended this shitty day.


	58. Too Comfortable

I gently slip my hands up underneath her shirt and cup my palms around her lower stomach. I have to really concentrate to get my hands to stop shaking. When I examine and operate on little kids and babies, I have the steadiest hands in the world and I have no problems doing their examinations. But for some reason, even the thought of having to examine Jo is making my hands tremble beyond my control. I know how to check for the signs of a broken pelvis without an x-ray machine and I know how to check for blunt force trauma to the body. Those are things I learned how to do back in my second and third years of residency; things that are beaten into my brain by now. If I know how to do these things so eloquently and proficiently, why are my hands shaking so badly right now? I have to examine her. I have to make sure she's alright; that's the least I can do, I think. I'm the reason she's laying here on these steps writhing in pain, the least I can do is make sure she's okay. Even if she is okay, I don't think I'm ever going to be able to forgive myself for hurting her in the first place. "I'm sorry, Jo." I fold her shirt back away from her stomach and check to see if there's any bruising on her stomach first. I actually haven't cried, which is kind of a big deal because I think I want to. My forehead is sweating quite a bit, which is probably due to the fact that I'm nervous as hell right now. If I broke any bone in this girl's body, I will NEVER forgive myself. "What's your pain like now?" I just asked her what it was like five minutes ago but I don't know what else to say besides "sorry" and I think she's getting sick of hearing me apologize.

"Still a ten." She's not crying, which is a good sign but the fact that she's saying consistently that her pain is at a ten isn't good. Her face is blotchy, red and she's staring up at the ceiling but she's not shedding tears. I force my hands to stop freaking shaking and gently walk my fingertips down her stomach to her hips. I wrap my shaking fingers around the strings of her cloth shorts and rub my forehead against the side of my t-shirt to dry it of sweat so no more of my sweat drips down on her body. I untie the drawstrings on her shorts and start to pull them down a little bit. "Don't do that." Her own hands are trembling but for a totally different reason than mine are. Hers are trembling because she's in pain but mine are trembling because I realize how badly I just fucked up. She puts her hands down on top of mine. "Don't take my pants off. Don't do that." Even though her hands are shaking badly, she still manages to push mine away. "I told you I'm—"

"Don't care about your period, Jo." Careful not to bump her the wrong way, I start sliding her pants down. "I'm more concerned about what's going on with your hips. I could care less what's going on between your legs right now." Not that I care about her being on her womanly thing, but I couldn't even tell that she is. She left no evidence of it in the bathroom, she's not acting like it, she's not moping around and being miserable like some girls on their monthly things do. She's just being normal, regular Jo. Not even her underwear give it away. It has been a very long time since I've had to deal with a girl on her monthly, considering the fact that Jenna's been dead for nine months and she didn't get her period while she was sick anyway because the drugs she was on kind of killed it in a way. But I do remember bits and pieces of what Jenna was like when she was on hers and it's nothing like the way Jo's acting. I pull her shorts down to her thighs and accidentally pull her underwear down a little bit too, so I fix those back up before I take a look at her hips. I'm honestly scared to even look at her hips. I'm scared that I might see bruises or something worse. "Do you think you can walk? With the way you're feeling right now, you think you could walk? Or is that out of the question?" I finally take a look at her waist.

"I can't feel my legs right now." She sounds like talking hurts her. Her voice is strained like it would be if someone was straining themselves trying to lift a weight or do some type of strenuous exercise and her eyes are closed. She's really, really hurt. I fucked up so bad. I swear to god if this woman is hurt, I'm never going to let myself live it down. Every time I look at her, I'm just going to think back and back about how I hurt her and I'm never going to forgive myself for it. Please don't let her be hurt. Please let her be okay. The skin on her hips is still perfectly intact, no signs of perforations or edges that could indicate that her bones are out of place. She doesn't have any bruising…but if she's saying she can't feel her legs, something serious might truly be wrong with her. When she lies down, her hips always stick out because she's such a tiny person but they're not sticking out anymore. I cup my four fingers together and press down on her hip, where it usually would be sticking out. "Do you have to do that?" She winces to let me know that I'm hurting her. "Just don't touch me, okay? I think I'm alright…" I ignore her wishes and press down on the other side. I put both my hands on her hips and push them at the same time, which causes them to crack. "Oh…" She wrinkles her brows. I don't like the way her hips are cracking. I grab the waistband of her shorts again and finish taking them all the way off. "Can you just help me up, Alex?"

"Shh." I toss her shorts to the side and grab onto her knee. I stretch her leg out straight. "Can you feel me touching your knee?" She shakes her head and my stomach drops. If she really can't feel her legs… I might've paralyzed her. I don't think she realizes how serious her not being able to feel her legs actually is. That's the first sign of paralysis. Right now, I'm thinking that maybe the impact knocked her replacements out of place and maybe a piece of the metal shot up and dislodged a portion of her spinal cord. It's rare but I've actually seen it happen three times before in patients with pelvic fractures. I try to keep a brave face so I don't alarm her, but I scoot my hands up to her thigh. "You feel that?" She shakes her head again. I squeeze her thigh hard enough to leave a mark. "That?" She shakes her head. I walk my hand up to her inner thigh. "There?" Still nothing. I hate to do it but I think she'll understand that I'm not being sexual. I touch and push down on her vagina. "You feel that?"

"…A little. More on the right side than the left…" She gnashes her teeth together. I push down on her waist. "I feel that…I feel that." She mumbles. "Can you please just help me up? I wanna lie down…" She clearly doesn't understand why I cannot do that. I can't help her stand if she doesn't feel her damn legs to do so. I really think I might've paralyzed her. I should've known better. She's still recovering from a broken pelvis and I thought it was okay to joke around on a flight of steps with her. I really think I'm incapable of being good to her. Tonight is the first night where I can focus 100% on Jo without having to fret about the hearing or about my daughter and I hurt her. I ended up injuring her. I think I'm incapable of being the kind of man she deserves. "Alex, just help me up, okay? I don't need this…"

"Wiggle your toes for me." While I'm giving her just a visual exam, I really don't see anything out of the ordinary. Usually with new breaks, the area swells up fairly quickly, it bruises quite fast and all the bones shift if one is knocked out of place because the pelvis is a ring of bones all connected together. If one bone falls out of place, the whole structure shifts. Her hips look okay. They're uneven but they've always been uneven. I noticed that back in Disney. They don't look any different than they usually do. Her skin isn't discolored or disjointed in any way…she looks okay. But if she's telling me that she can't feel her legs than she's not okay by any standard. "Jo…wiggle your toes for me." I ask again because the last time I asked her to wiggle her toes, her toes didn't budge. I'm starting to get really scared but I don't to let her know that. I gently put her leg back down against the steps and pick up only her foot. "Wiggle your toes for me, babe…." That's how I know I'm worried. I don't ever call anyone babe. "Come on…" I rub my thumb along her toes. "If you wiggle 'em for me, I'll leave you alone."

"I am wiggling them…aren't they moving?" She tries shifting her weight so she can look down at her feet as well and as soon as she moves, her foot moves too. "They're moving…I'm wiggling them." She props herself up on her elbows and starts wiggling her toes back and forth really fast. "See? Now help me up." I don't think there's a reason for me to tell her that I thought she was paralyzed for a second there. There's no need to alarm her. So after the relief has finished washing itself all over my body, I bring her foot up to my mouth, kiss her toes and put her leg down for good. She's okay. Nothing's out of place, there aren't any bruises or any bone malformations, she can move her foot…she's alright. I put my hands underneath her arms and help her up. "Ouch…" She holds onto me pretty tightly as she stands up for the first time in about fifteen minutes. "I shouldn't have hit the floor that hard." She wraps her arm around my waist and leans her weight against me. I squeeze my own arm around her waist as well and help her the rest of the way down the steps. "…Does this mean I can have the Oreos?"

I smirk at how she could've just been seriously hurt but all she's worried about is the damn Oreos. "Yeah…you can have the Oreos." I press my lips to her temple and kiss her hard. I'm so glad that she's okay. It would've been horrible if she was hurt. She's still going to be pretty hurt but it's not going to be as bad as it would be if she had re-broken something or ended up paralyzed. She'll be pretty sore tomorrow morning, that's for damn sure. And I'll never play around with her on the steps again. "I'm sorry for that. I shouldn't have been messing around on the steps like that." I practically carry her to the kitchen so she doesn't have to put weight on her legs. "I won't do that again. I'm sorry, alright?" I turn on the kitchen light. "How big a glass of milk do you want?" I'm functioning with one arm right now since I'm using one to hold her up but I'm fine with one arm. "You want a small glass or a big glass?"

"A small one." I can still tell by the tone of her voice that she's in pain. She wraps her other arm around my waist and rests her head on my chest. "…I'm gonna sleep on the couch tonight." I grab a small glass from the cabinet and unscrew the cap off the gallon of milk. "I don't really want to walk up the steps…I don't think I can. I just want to sleep down here."

"You're not sleeping on the couch." I maneuver around the kitchen with one arm and limited mobility due to the fact that she's hanging all over me. I open up the snack drawer and grab the package of Oreos. "You just hurt yourself…it's not going to help you to sleep on a hard, springy couch. You need to sleep somewhere comfortable. Don't worry about the steps. I've got you." I turn off the kitchen light. "You grab the milk and the Oreos." I motion to the countertop where I set the milk and the cookies at. She does what I said and grabs the glass and the package. "You got 'em?" I ask. She nods her head. "Alright…hold onto me." I bend my knees a little and use both my arms to pick her up underneath her butt. I don't want to put her on my hip like I know I can because that might hurt her pelvis. I don't want to scoop her up and carry her in my arms like I know I can because that might hurt her too. I think the safest way to carry her is the way I am; with my arms supported underneath her butt and her basically propped up on my shoulder. I feel her stiffen in my arms and I hear her gasp. "I'm not gonna drop you. I promise I'm not gonna drop you." Picking Jo up is like picking up a sack of feathers. She weighs next to nothing. "If you're not feeling any better tomorrow, I'm taking you to the hospital."

"I don't want to go to the hospital. I don't need the hospital. I'm fine, Alex…just leave it alone. I'll be alright." She sighs in my arms. "If I wasn't okay, I would tell you. I'm fine."

"You know I'm sorry though, right?" We make it back to our bedroom and I safely deposit her on top of the mattress. "I'm sorry." I start helping her into the bed. "You know I would never hurt you." She nods her head and just watches me while I pull back the covers and stuff. "I really didn't mean to do that, Jo. I can't tell you sorry enough. I really didn't mean to hurt you like that. I wasn't thinking." I grab her legs and help her underneath the covers. All she's interested in is getting to the Oreos on the nightstand next to where she's laying. I hand her the milk and put the Oreos on her lap. "I really didn't mean that. I would never intentionally hurt you. I was just…" I take off my t-shirt and start getting ready to climb in the bed with her. "I'm so sorry."

"Shut up already." She submerges her first cookie in milk and holds it there. "It's not like you pushed me down the steps. Alex, I know you're sorry. Shut up about it. You're getting on my nerves now. Stop saying sorry. Geez."

"Alright." I climb beneath the sheets with her and lay my head on my pillow. "…You sure you're okay?" She sucks her teeth and rolls her eyes at me. "Not with the steps thing but with everything…are you okay?" I turn towards her and prop myself up on my elbow so I can look at her. "With the hearing? You okay with that?" I know I'm annoying her and pissing her off and whatever but I kind of just want to know what she's thinking. I can usually read Jo like an open book but she's been hard for me to read today. I don't know what she's thinking, what she's feeling… today's just been a big blur for me when it comes to her. She nods her head which does nothing but fuel my suspicions that there's something further that's wrong with her. She usually has something to say to me but tonight, she's been kind of quiet. Something's wrong with her and she won't tell me what it is. "Well is there anything you're…lying to me about?" I don't want to accuse her of lying but I don't know how else to approach it. I'll sound stupid if I just come right out and say "hey Jo, I know there's something you're not telling me".

She looks at me like I've just insulted her. "Leave me alone, Alex." She turns away from me and shoves a third Oreo in her mouth. "Why are you so problematic? If I tell you there's nothing wrong, you should believe me when I say there's nothing wrong…not accuse me of lying." She licks her lips and all of a sudden, she closes up the package of cookies and puts them, along with the cup of milk, back on the nightstand. It's as if she lost her appetite. "I'm going to bed." She scoots down slowly and puts her head on her pillow.

"Well you know Jo, if there's something wrong with you, you should tell me instead of trying to hide it. Unless I'm the problem, I could try to help you." She pulls the covers up to her neck and that's when it dawns on me that yes…I am the problem. I have to be. Any other time, she doesn't have an issue airing her concerns about things to me. Any other time, she's perfectly fine with telling me what's on her mind and what she's thinking and how she feels. Now all of a sudden, she's being secretive, dismissive, and quiet with me and doesn't want to sleep with me. I think she's lying about being on her period but I thought that when she initially told me that she was. I just didn't say anything about it because I thought she must really be scared to tell me that she doesn't want to have sex if she thought the only way to get out of it was to lie and tell me she was on her rag. First of all, she's not even acting like she's on her period. She's not moody that I can see, being bitchy, nothing. I went into the bathroom after her earlier and I don't even recall seeing feminine products in the trashcan, she said she was going downstairs to take some Midol for supposed cramps and she never took it and when I was checking her, I saw the kind of underwear she had on. She's wearing a pair of light grey boyshort underwear with light pink little hearts all over the fabric. Normal girls don't wear underwear like that when they're on their rag. I think she's lying about being on her period so she doesn't have to sleep with me…which is bogus because all she has to do is tell me that she doesn't want to have sex and I'll be fine with that. Bottom line, there's something wrong with Jo and she won't tell me. Which leads me to believe that I'm the problem. "Am I the problem, Jo? Are you mad at me?"

"No. But you're about to make me." She sounds really harsh. Maybe I should just leave her alone after all. But if there's a problem with me…if there's an issue she's having with me, she should be able to tell me. She shouldn't feel like she has to resort to lying so she doesn't have to sleep with me and she shouldn't feel like she has to keep whatever it is a secret and deal with it on her own. If we're ever going to get anywhere with our relationship, we have to communicate better. "I'm fine. Why do you always want something to be wrong with me? You want something to be wrong with me so bad so you can fix it. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm fine. You're driving me crazy. There's nothing wrong with me but if you keep asking, there's GOING to be. It's…" She sighs. "It's like when your mother accuses you of having an attitude when you really don't. Then you get an attitude from her accusing you. You keep accusing me of having something wrong, there's GOING to be. You're driving me bonkers. There's NOTHING wrong with me…okay? Take my word for it."

"Then why don't you want to sleep with me? Why are you refusing to talk to me? You're being all quiet and acting like you're hiding something. If there's nothing wrong then how come you're being so weird, Jo? And not just today…but lately. You've been acting so weird lately. What's the matter with you? And don't say nothing because it's something. I'm not sure what it is but it's something. When I come home from work, you don't act like you're even happy to see me. When we sit down and eat dinner, you don't say anything. If I ask you if want to watch a movie, you always sound so nonchalant. And now you don't want to sleep with me. If there's something wrong…I mean, you should tell me. If you want to break up, fine. If this whole…dating a guy with a kid is too much for you, just say so…that's all I'm saying."

"I'M ON MY PERIOD! Oh my….GOD, Alex!" She throws her hands up in the air. "What do you want me to do?! Throw a towel down so I don't bleed all over the bed and have sex with you anyway?! I'm sorry if you're into the whole bloody crotch thing but I think it's gross and I'm not sleeping with you while I'm on my PERIOD. When did I ever say I don't want to have sex with you?! Oh my gooooood. If I didn't want to fuck you, you'd know it! You're starting to really make me angry. If this is how you're going to be every time I tell you no to sex for a couple days then—"

"But I already know you're lying about it though, that's the thing." Surprisingly, my tone is very calm. She's blowing up on me and going off at the mouth but I'm perfectly calm. I like to think that I know Jo pretty well. And if I know her as well as I think I know her, her blowing up like this is just proving my allegations correct. She wouldn't just blow up on me like this for no reason. I mean yeah, I kind of gave her a reason to flip her lid but not really. She doesn't need to yell if I'm not yelling. "I already know you're lying to me about being on it. And that's fine. It's fine if you want to lie about it, I don't…care, really. I just wanna know why you're lying."

"BUT I'M NOT!" She sits up in the bed and reaches over to turn the light back on. "Why would I lie to you about being on my period? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of! What do you want me to do, Alex? Rip out my goddamn tampon right here? Because I will! I won't like it, but I will!" The tone of her voice went from yelling to whining and before I can even suspect that she's going to cry, she clasps her hands over her eyes and starts weeping. See? Something's really wrong with her. Maybe I was wrong about the period thing and I sincerely apologize for calling her a liar, but I'm not wrong about anything else. There's something wrong with her and I don't know what it is. "What more do you want from me? I've already done everything you asked…I did everything you wanted me to do and then some…what else do you want? What else?" She takes her hands away from her face and lifts up her shirt. "Okay…okay I'll have sex with you. Okay, I'll do it… I'll do it." Even though I know she's pain, she elevates her hips and starts to take off her underwear. "We can have sex." I think she's having a breakdown. I really do think she's having some sort of mental breakdown and I swear I don't know why. She just went from fuming mad to hysterical within a matter of seconds. "Lemme just go get something to lie down first…I'll get a towel…" She starts getting out of the bed and that's when I grab her arm. "No, it's okay Alex…really, it's okay. I'll have sex with you." She's talking through tears and her voice is all murky.

"Stop it, Jo. Why are you acting like this?" I pull her towards me but she's still trying to get out of the bed. "Why are you being like this? What is the matter with you?" I pull her over so that she's laying against me. "What's wrong? What you mean, you've done everything? What are you talking about?"

"Just tell me what you want and I'll do it…whatever you want, I promise I'll do it. Quit my job? Okay. Move in with you? Okay. Stick around and support you while you're going through a custody battle? That's fine too. If you want your space for a few days, okay. If you want sex, okay. Just lemme know whatever it is you want and I'll just…I'll do it. I just…" She buries her face back in her hands. "I did everything you asked of me and then some…what more do you want? I've given you everything. M-my life, my time, my heart…do you want me to give you my dignity now too? Because I will…if it'll make you happy, I will. If it'll make you happy to have sex with me right now, I will. I don't want to, but I will. Just tell me what it is that you want. What else do you want? Because I've given you EVERYTHING I have and somehow it's still not enough….somehow you still find time to call me a liar."

So here it is. Now the truth's coming out. She feels like she's giving me too much. I got it. I take her hands away from her eyes only to expose her tear covered cheeks. I grab her by her torso and carefully…very gently, I pull her over toward me. I cradle my arms around her body and let her cry on my chest. She's not happy in our relationship. She's not happy being with me, she's not happy living with me and she's definitely not happy without a job. She's just terribly unhappy. She's unhappy in our relationship…and if she's unhappy then I have to let her go. I can't make her unhappy. I'll never forgive myself if I let her stay in this relationship, knowing how unhappy she is. Because once again, like her mother told me would happen, everything she's been bottling up over the last few weeks has just come out in a big flood of issues and these are problems she's been having for weeks now. She's been feeling this way for weeks, which means she's been unhappy for weeks and I can't keep her around just to make myself happy when she's not happy herself. It's going to sting like hell and I'm going to miss her so damn bad but I have to let her go. I can't keep her in a relationship that she's unhappy in. How selfish would that make me? I love her too much to let her stay with me unhappy.

I knew this wasn't working though. I wanted it to work so bad that I turned a blind eye to everything and pretended like it was all good when in reality, I knew it wasn't. I wanted it to work so bad that I ignored the fact that we've had more downs in our relationship than ups. Either she's comforting me or I'm comforting her and it's just the way of our relationship. We can't seem to catch a break in our relationship and I wanted it to work so bad that I ignored all of that. I love Jo. I love her so much. But I think it's time to let her go. I think it's time to love her from a distance. We tried a relationship and it's clearly not working and although I'm quite content with the relationship I have with her, she's not. I guess I would be happy, right? She's been busting her ass to make sure I'm happy and supported by her. She's been stretching herself thin to ensure that I get the things I need; the things that would make me happy. But I haven't. I've been too down with the court hearing to give her any more than 10% at a time when she's been giving me 210%. Of course I'm happy when she's breaking her back to make sure that I am. And of course she's unhappy when she's spending so much time making me happy and not enough time making herself happy. And me…I haven't been giving her as much as she's been giving me. I've been taking more than I've been giving to her. Of course I'm happy…and of course she isn't.

"…Do you want an out?" I rest my lips against the top of her head while she cries against my chest. I take the moment to inhale the scent of the top of her head, the feeling of her tears on my bare chest, the sound of her sobs, the feeling of her body pulsating up and down while she breathes and just the entire bliss of having her in my arms. Because after tonight, I don't think I'll hold her in my arms again. After tonight, I think my days of holding Jo are over. So I'm going to make the best of this. "I think we need to end this, Jo. I really do." I whisper to her, kissing the crown of her head. "I love you. You know I do. But I hurt you more than I help you. I make you cry more than I make you happy…and I can't live with myself if I do that. I can't live with myself if I know that I'm keeping you in a relationship that makes you want to cry more than smile. You know I love you. You know that. But I think this is over. I think we should just…stop shooting ourselves in the foot; specifically you. I take more from you than I give to you. And I hate that. I do…but I know that. I'm offering you an out. I'll buy you your house back if that's what you want, I'm sure you can go back to working down at the diner but if you don't want to, we can still go job hunting for you tomorrow. I'll help you do whatever it is you need to do but I'm offering you an out…and I really think you should take it."

She sniffs and picks her head up. "…So wait. First you make me fall on the steps…then you call me a liar…and now you break up with me?" She runs her hands through her hair and sniffs again. "You really are an asshole." She shakes her head at me. "You make me give you everything and then you break up with me? I didn't want to move out of my home but I did it to make you happy and now that I don't have a home, I don't have anywhere to run when I'm overwhelmed like I was today. I put her to bed and I suddenly found myself thrown into being a mother…something that I'm comfortable with but something that I just needed a minute to process…a minute I don't have anymore because I can't just go to my house and sit in my own bedroom and think anymore. I can't do that because you took it from me. I feel so…so…scummy right now because I don't even have a job. I don't have a job because you wanted me to quit it and so I did. You…took everything from me and now you're breaking up with me? I had a fucking panic attack in the bathroom earlier because that's the only place I have left to go to get some space…and you…break up with me." She shakes her head again. "Asshole."

"Jo, listen to me! Listen…" I try cradling her face in my hands but she snatches away from me. "Jo, stop it! Dammit, stop. Would you just listen? Damn, you're hardheaded." I grab her face again and force her to look at me. "I love you. I love you so much that I actually fucking hate you right now for making me love you this much, you hear me?" Telling her that really calmed her down, just like I thought it would. She looks at me with tears in her beautiful brown eyes. "I'm a mess right now. I've been leeching off you and sucking the life out of you and giving you…nothing in return. You're making me the happiest man alive but at what price? With the hearing past us and nothing standing in our way of being happy, I'm really trying to be better. Not by causing you to fall or accusing you of…of lying. That's not me trying to be better and I realize I need to try harder and I will. I will make sure you're happy every second of every day while you're with me and I haven't been doing that. But I will do that. I love you, I wanna be with you and you're _probably_ going to be my wife someday but I'm offering you an out that I think you should take. I can't give you anything right now besides tears but I WILL get it together someday. I will. And I don't think it's fair for you to have to sit around unhappy while I figure out how to get my head outta my ass. I…I mess up everything for myself. Every. Frickin'. Time. When I have something good, I mess it up. I'm messing it up with you right now and I'm too much of an idiot to know how to stop. Alright? So I'm offering you an out and I think you should take it because I don't want to see you sad anymore."

"Well that's just too fucking bad." She shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head at the same time. "I'm not going anywhere. Thanks for your advice and thanks for the offer but you can shove it up your ass because I'm not going anywhere and I'm not taking you up on your offer. I didn't put all this effort and energy into this relationship for you to piss it away because you can't get your shit together, Alex. I didn't move out of my house, I didn't quit my job, I didn't endure stares, snarky comments and rumors about me, fall in love with you and give you my EVERYTHING….for you to decide that you want to PISS this all away." She bites her lip. "So fuck it. I'm not going anywhere." She wipes her face. "But you've gotta get your shit together, Alex. Don't…get comfortable because you know that I'm not leaving. Get your shit together because I really don't know how much I can take. You said it yourself…you've been taking and not giving and I'm feeling weak. I'm feeling so weak so you need to get it together. You really need to get it together. And I mean it. Because I'm not going to keep putting up with this." She slips her hand into mine. "I'll take Lyla and I'll leave if you don't get it together."

I smirk when she says that. I know she's not being serious when she says that because the tone of her voice says so and the way she's trying to fight off a smile confirms it. But what's really funny is the fact that I would oddly be alright with that. Obviously I'd be pissed off if I came home to find that my girlfriend and my child were gone but if Jo were to take Lyla and leave like some wives do to their husbands, I would be alright with it. I wouldn't freak out and call the cops to report a kidnapping. I'd treat it as if it really were my wife that took my kid. I'd know Lyla was safe with her mother so I wouldn't snap about it. I'd be pissed but I'd accept it and go the more traditional route of begging Jo to take me back, the way some men do when their spouses take their kids and get gone. "I'll get it together."

"You better." She leans in and gives me a soft, chaste little kiss on the lips. "…And I'll start talking to you more. I'm not really…I'm kind of a suffer-in-silence girl so it's hard for me to always realize when I need to vent to someone but if I have an issue in the future, I'll talk to you about it. I promise." I hold her face still and kiss her lips once again, for plenty of reasons. I kissed her again because I wanted some more of her lips from the first kiss but mostly because I really thought that I wouldn't kiss those lips again for a second there. When I pull away, she wraps her arms around my neck and squeezes me. "…You think maybe we can get through tomorrow without an argument or a catastrophe?" I smirk again and squeeze her. "We should go to sleep…long day tomorrow."

"Yeah." I let her go and help her lie down again. She said that she's not going anywhere…but like she also said, I'm not going to get too comfortable with that thought.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"What about this one?" I pick up a pink backpack with purple straps. "You want this one?" I turn it towards her so she can see that it has Elsa and Anna on it with Olaf on the straps. Shopping has been disastrous so far but only because I took her to get a lunchbox first and she was PISSED when all the Frozen ones were sold out and she had to settle for a Hello Kitty one. That pretty much ruined shopping for her. "It has Anna and Elsa. You like this?" With her lunchbox in her hand, she nods her head and looks down at the floor. As much as I don't want to admit it, I am really excited for preschool to start. I found that out before we left the house this morning. When I woke up this morning, I was in really bad pain from the fall last night. I wasn't going to come with Alex and I was just going to have him bring job applications home for me because I really didn't know how I was going to walk around stores all day. But I got up and I helped him get Lyla dressed and that's when I realized that I had to come with them. I popped some Aspirin and came right along with them after I got her dressed. Getting her dressed this morning was so much fun. I can't wait to do it all the time. I put her in a pair of red leggings and a red t-shirt with a black heart on the front. I tied a red hairbow in her ponytail and decked her out with red converse. I had so much fun dressing her up like a little baby doll. I'm so excited for preschool. "Alright come on…let's go find daddy."

"Mommy…" She holds my hand and starts walking. I look around at the top of the aisles for labels because I have no idea where Alex is at. He said he was going to look at new comforters for our bedroom and possible bathroom sets to redecorate the upstairs bathroom but I don't know where that's at. Macy's is such a big store. "Mommy…Mommy." She's tapping me on my leg with her free hand. "Mommy."

"What, baby face?" I stop walking so I can pay attention to her.

"We go eat-eat when we get daddy? I hungy." I look down at the watch on my wrist. Well yeah, I guess she would be hungry. We stopped at Bob Evans for breakfast this morning when we got into Pensacola and that's the last thing she ate. We've been toting her around to school after school, store after store and she hasn't had anything in her belly for about three or four hours. I applied for so many jobs today it's not funny. I applied for every single elementary school we came across, which was about 16 different schools. I applied for four high school positions since most openings were only for English teachers and I applied for six middle school positions. Someone HAS to hire me. I'm really hoping to get into either J.M. Tate High School or Pensacola High School. Both of those schools were looking to hire Statistics teachers and I would LOVE to teach Stats. I'll settle for one of the middle school positions though and if I don't get that, I'd like to teach the elementary schools. I don't want to teach the other two high school positions at Pensacola Christian Academy or Booker T. Washington High School because both of those positions were for Algebra teachers. I hate Algebra. I can teach it no problem but I think Algebra is boring. If I teach at a high school level, I want it to be Stats. "I hungy mommy…" She's starting to whine.

"What did I tell you about talking like a baby?" I bend down and pick her up since she's being whiny. Lyla being whiny can only mean one of two things; and neither one is good. She'll either sit down and throw a tantrum in the middle of the store or she'll just start wailing. "You're not a baby, are you? You're a big girl. We don't talk like babies anymore." I hoist her on my aching hip and start walking towards the furniture section.

"…I'm hungry." She corrects herself and lays on my shoulder.

"We'll go get something to eat when we find daddy." I stop walking again just so I can kiss her on her cheek. I wouldn't be mad at her if she did start crying though. She's been a little trooper throughout this whole entire trip. We've been dragging her all over the place and she hasn't complained not once. "What do you wanna eat? You wanna eat somewhere in here or do you want me to tell daddy to take us somewhere else? They have pizza here, spaghetti, Chinese food, tacos, Subway, McDonald's, Dairy Queen…" I start naming some of the restaurants we passed when we first entered this mall. "Or do you wanna go somewhere where we can sit down and eat?" She's slipping so I pull her up on my hip a little better. She shakes her head and sticks her thumb in her mouth. Out of nowhere, she puts her hand on my cheek and starts scratching this spot near my mouth, which makes me laugh because I already know what she's doing. "That doesn't come off sweetie. That's on my skin. It's a mark. It's not gonna come off." She's scratching the beauty mark I have by my mouth. "Where'd daddy go?" She shrugs her shoulders and starts messing with my hair next. She's also sleepy. She hasn't had a nap today. When I start to turn the bend to get into the furniture aisle, a sparkly pink shirt catches my eye. "…Look at that baby." I walk over to the rack it's on and look at it. It's a tank top and it's hot pink with flecks of glitter all over it. It'd look cute with a black blazer over it and a pair of black boots…and Alex bought her a little cardigan looking thing that would go perfectly with it. "You like this shirt? You wanna get it?" She nods her head. "Let's find your size…"

Standing next to us and sifting through the same rack I'm currently sifting through is a tall, brunette woman with her baby strapped to her chest. I always thought that was kind of lame. I'd rather push a baby in a stroller than strap it to my chest and wear it. The baby's pretty cute though so I'll give her a pass. I search through the rack for the smallest size they offer. The woman picks up the same pink shirt I'm looking for and when she turns around, she accidentally bumps into me and Lyla. "Excuse me." She instinctively cradles the baby on her chest and apologizes to me profusely. "I'm so sorry."

"You're fine, ma'am. These aisles are a little narrow." I look over to make sure Lyla's okay. Her thumb is still stuck in her mouth and she's holding her lunchbox and her bookbag tight. The woman looks at Lyla too, just as I take my hand off of her leg and smooth a loose piece of her hair back.

"She's really pretty." She looks at me then back at Lyla. "Hi there, cutie…what's your name?" In a very motherly kind of way, she rubs Lyla's hand. "You're such a little cutie."

"Tell her your name." I nudge her.

"…Lyla." She buries her face in my neck and squeezes me.

"She's so shy." I explain to the woman so that she doesn't think I'm holding a brat here. "She doesn't talk to anyone that's not me or her father and I'm really kind of hoping she gets outta that because she's starting preschool next week." I press my lips to Lyla's forehead so she knows that there's nothing to be scared of. If anything, being taken away from Alex has only made her shier than she already was. But lately, I'm not sure if she's just shy or afraid of strangers that might take her away again. "She says thank you though."

"You're welcome." She takes her hand off of Lyla with a smile still on her face and cradles her baby again. "She looks just like you so I guess I'm complimenting you." She starts to giggle. Like me? That's not possible…and that's not possible for about thirty thousand biological reasons.

"Oh, she's not…" My voice trails off. I'm not about to tell this woman all my business, especially when it's kind of complicated to explain that I'm not her mother and she can't look like me. But that's a lot of effort to explain to a stranger that I'll probably never see again in my life, so I just smile at her. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. You two have a nice day." She waves at us, takes her shirt and walks away.

So now Lyla looks like me? I don't believe that. I think that woman was just looking for something to say to me. I shake my head to clear my thoughts, grab the shirt in a size small and continue walking towards where Alex should be. That was weird. I carry Lyla through the furniture section, looking around for Alex. When I finally spot him, he's staring at a couch set. I put Lyla down on the floor once I see him and grab her hand. "Go show daddy what you got." I pat her on her butt to give her a boost to go to Alex. She lets my hand go and walks over to him. She taps him on the leg and shows him the lunchbox, the shirt and the backpack. It's taking me a little longer to approach them because my hips are kind of bugging me but I brought extra Aspirin with me and I'll take some more when we go eat. I hold onto the back of a loveseat and slowly drag my feet over to where they are because lifting my legs to walk hurts more than dragging them. "She's hungry so we should probably get her something to eat."

"Yeah, I was just thinking that she might be." He bends down and picks her up. He's been looking at me with a guilty look on his face ever since he made me fall last night. I'm not holding that over his head though. He didn't mean to make me fall. Like I said, it's not like he pushed me down the steps. We were joking around, being fat asses and fighting over food and something happened. It was an accident. I'm not hanging it over his head and I'm not even mad at him. I don't even think it's his fault, really. But every time he sees me limp, the look on his face is just pure guilty and he starts being super nice to me. He's been kissing my ass since our fight last night too. Again, I'm not a big grudge holder unless someone really pisses me off pretty bad. I'm not holding our fight over him either. As long as he knows that I meant everything I said last night, I don't need to relive the fight. "…I was gonna ask my D-A-D to watch H-E-R so me and you can go to the M-O-V-I-E-S tonight. You want to?" Yep…been kissing my ass since I gave him the third degree last night. I kind of like it though.

"Yeah, that sounds good." I nod my head and turn around as we start to walk towards the exit and checkout of the store. He puts the arm he's not using to hold Lyla against my back to support me while I walk. "What would you want to see?"

"I don't know anything that's out, really…so I'll let you pick." He pulls me a little closer.

"I kinda wanna see Magic Mike XXL." I suggest.

"I'm not going to see a movie about male strippers, Jo. That's gay as hell and I'm not gay." He's dead ass serious, which makes me laugh pretty hard. "Pick something else."

"….Ant-Man, Fantastic Four, The Gift…Southpaw. That movie about boxing…wanna go see that?"

"Yeah…Southpaw can be arranged. But I'm not seeing Magic Mike. You can forget that."

"Already forgotten."


	59. Letting Go

**A/N:** Little bit of **M** rated language this chapter.

* * *

My fingers fumble around with the twist tie on the loaf of bread as my vision adjusts to the light I turned on in the kitchen. Not that it's still dark outside being that it's 7:00 in the morning; I just haven't turned a light on in the house until I reached the kitchen. I literally rolled out of bed this morning, stuck my slippers on and came straight downstairs. It's too early for me to be awake right now—I'm barely even functioning. Even though I'm very groggy with sleep, I still untie the bread and grab two slices out of the bag. I yawn hard and stand on my tiptoes so I can grab the peanut butter from the cupboard. I grab the jar with the blue cap since she likes crunchy peanut butter more than regular peanut butter. I grab a butter knife from the drawer, a banana from the bunch resting on top of the microwave and start making her sandwich. I spread a little bit of crunchy peanut butter on each side of bread and peel the skin off the banana. I cut the slices of banana really thin and layer four slices on each side of the bread. Since there's banana left over, I eat the remainder of it while I put the sandwich together and cut it in half. Still chewing on my own banana, I put her sandwich in a sandwich baggie and toss it on the counter.

I open up the snack drawer and grab a bag of Cheetos Puffs. I peel back the packaging and grab three strawberry wafer cookies and shut the drawer by hitting it with my hip. I wrap her cookies up in some saran wrap and stick them on the counter next to the Cheetos and the peanut butter banana sandwich. I rub my eyes one good time in hopes of waking myself completely up and open the fridge so I can see what kind of fruits I'm working with. An apple will suffice, I do believe. I pick a red apple out of the baggie in the crisper, take it to the sink to wash it off and start cutting it into slices. I toss the slices in another sandwich bag and pick up the pink Hello Kitty lunchbox off the counter beside the fridge. I grab the ice pack from the freezer and unzip the bottom part of the lunchbox. I stick the ice pack in the compartment and zip it back up. I lay her apples directly on bottom so they can be kept cold and I lay her CapriSun next to the apples. I shove the chips and cookies in next and on top of everything, I place her sandwich and zip it right back up. I store her lunchbox in the fridge until it's time for her to go and walk over to the kitchen table so I can grab her backpack off the seat.

I unzip her backpack and look around inside it to make sure we did indeed pack all her supplies. A box of crayons, some washable markers, a pink princess blanket and the matching pillow for rest time, glue sticks, safety scissors and a princess themed pencil box. I check and make sure everything we bought her is labeled with her name on it, including her blanket and her small pillow. I did all of this last night but I just want to double check and make sure I don't send her off today without something she might need. We had orientation last Friday where Alex and I got to meet her teacher and see the room she'd be in and stuff. Her teacher's name is Miss Kim and she gave us a list of supplies that she should have for today. She explained to us that the curriculum and schedule is basically identical to a real-life kindergarten situation because they want to prepare the children for kindergarten as best as they can. They're going to feed her breakfast there, she's going to have different things to do at different times, they're going to eat lunch in the cafeteria at the YMCA, there's going to be a rest time and a dismissal. It's pretty much exactly what kindergarten at a regular school is going to be like. They start at 8:20 and I have to go pick her up at 3:00; so she's virtually gone all day.

The outfit I picked out last night for her to wear today is so cute. The shirt is brown with real cute and colorful Hawaiian looking flowers all over it. The skirt that goes with it is brown too but it has a bunch of the same colorful flowers all over it and I chose a pair of pink sandals to go with it. I don't know what I'm going to do to her hair yet. I turn out the kitchen light and stalk lifelessly and tiredly back up the steps. I hear the shower water running, which means that Alex is more than likely in it. He has to work today so it's literally going to be just me in the house today. He was supposed to go into work at 7:00 today but he got Arizona to let him come in at 9:00 so he can be here for Lyla's first day. Before I go into Lyla's room to wake her up, I head into the bathroom first. I put down the toilet seat since it's still up from the last time Alex went pee and pull down my pants. I sit down on the toilet and hold my head in my hands. I'm so tired. After I get her off to school, I'm coming home and getting so far back in the bed. I finish peeing and grab the toilet paper off the roll. Just as I begin to wipe myself, the shower water shuts off and the curtain pulls back. "…Morning." He greets me with grogginess still in his voice too. He wraps his towel around his waist and steps out. "Someone tired?"

"Extremely." I mumble and get up off the toilet. I pull my pants up, splash some water on my hands and roll my neck around in yet another attempt to wake myself up. I yawn once again and look in the towel cabinet for my curling iron. I pluck it off the top shelf and plug it in so it can heat up while I'm getting her ready. "I packed her lunch though. Her lunch is ready, her backpack is ready…I'm gonna go wake her up now." He stands behind me and puts his hands on my hips. He tilts his head forward and kisses me on my cheek first and once he leans in for another kiss, I already know what he's heading for. "I have morning breath. I didn't brush yet." I turn away from him. He shrugs his shoulders and kisses me on my lips anyway. His breath tastes all fresh and minty as opposed to my gross morning breath. He pulls away from my lips eventually and even though I'm standing in front of him, he lunges forward and grabs his razor off the sink counter. "…One more." I place my hand on top of his to stop him from shaving and turn around to face him. "Kiss." He closes his eyes again and pecks my lips. "Mmm…thank you." Even though he's wet, I rest my cheek against his chest and wrap my arms around his towel-covered waist. I think I'm just making up for lost time since we didn't cuddle last night.

We didn't have an argument or anything like that, we just didn't cuddle last night. We don't cuddle every night. Some nights we'll just turn our backs to each other and go right to sleep and that's that. Last night was one of those nights and it wasn't until I just kissed him that I realized how much I missed him. Things haven't been perfect since our last argument, but things also haven't been bad since our last argument. We've just been getting along better. He's been making conscious efforts to do better and I've been trying to be a little less high strung. I'm still kind of unhappy with the fact that I still don't have a job but I've been making the most of it. He still goes to work every day and I still sit in this house and play the role of housewife but it's not bothering me as much as it used to. I'd still like to get a job so I can help out but I don't mind cooking and cleaning as much as I thought I did. In fact, I find that I kind of like all the me time I've been getting and I've also found that Lyla and I have gotten pretty close due to all the time we've been spending alone together. She really is my little baby girl. The anxiety I was feeling about being her actual mother gradually went away and I've come to terms with the fact that I actually kind of like being a mother in some ways. I'm getting used to feeding her, playing with her, bathing her and cuddling with her whenever she wants me to but I did catch myself the other day feeling guilty when I had to discipline her.

A couple days ago while Alex was working 3-11, I saw her getting bored and restless so I thought it would be neat if we baked cookies. So I buckled her up in my car, ran to the store to pick up some cookie dough and we came home and baked cookies together. She kept trying to grab the stove even though I told her not to because it was hot. I told her about grabbing the stove three times before I smacked her on her hands and made her cry. I felt really guilty about it but Lyla didn't really hold it against me. She cried for a couple minutes but eventually, she wanted to lay on my chest and eat her cookies while we watched Sofia the First. I still felt a little guilty about it though, so I told Alex about it when he got home later and all he said was "well she shouldn't have been touching the stove after you told her not to". It kind of made me feel better that he wasn't mad at me for disciplining her so maybe eventually, I'll learn how not to feel guilty while disciplining Lyla but as of right now, it's still a little weird to me. I'd rather be a mother when she's being well behaved as opposed to when she's being bad but I'm guessing that's the case for all parents, not just substitute mothers.

I don't want to jinx anything, but I think things with me and Alex have been pretty good too. I think we're just learning how to communicate better which isn't something we were able to do before we had our big argument last week. We did end up going out for dinner and to the movies the night after our fight and while we ate dinner, we just sat and talked about what we argued about. Turns out that me and Alex weren't even in the same book. We talked and eventually we got in the same book…we talked some more and we found ourselves in the same chapter…and we just talked more until eventually, we were both on the same page. I was able to tell him why I was so upset and he apologized. He told me that he was sorry for not realizing that I didn't want to move out and I didn't want to quit my job. We kind of got into a mini argument because he felt like I should be grateful to him for "getting me out of that situation" and in a sense, I am. I'm glad that he felt the need to protect me from something that could've been potentially dangerous but at the same time, it's not what I wanted to do. I didn't want to quit my job and I didn't want to move in with him and the fact that he had my best interest at heart doesn't just magically wipe away the fact that he still begged me to do something I didn't want to do. Anyway, we're understanding each other way better now. I still feel like I'm giving him more than what he's giving me at times but it's nowhere near as bad as I was feeling about it. The feeling is gradually going away, actually. I'm starting to realize that even though he hasn't had the opportunity to be there for me as much as I've been there for him, he'd still do anything for me. I can ask Alex for anything and he'll give it to me and that's been changing my opinion of him. Like just yesterday, I needed sixty bucks to pay my phone bill and all I had to do was say "my phone bill is due" and he was already whipping out his wallet to give it to me. I don't like the fact that I had to count on him to pay my phone bill but it meant something to me that he would give it to me without question. Maybe he hasn't done as much for me as I've done for him, but he'd still do anything in this world for me if I ask.

"You sure you don't need me to help you get her up?" He asks as he tilts his head back to the ceiling and starts shaving his neck. Another thing about Alex that's changed in the recent days is how he learned how to just let me go when I want to cuddle. He's not always in the mood to cuddle and vice versa, but he learned how to just accept me whenever I'm in the mood and he's not. Sometimes I'll want to cuddle with him while he's laying on the couch watching TV and instead of getting annoyed, he just lets me lay on him and have my moment like he's doing right now. He's looking in the mirror behind me and despite the fact that my head is on his chest and my arms are around his waist, he's still shaving. He's not in the mood to cuddle with me and hold me back but he's not making me get off of him. He's just carrying on.

Me and Alex actually have a very annoying kind of relationship. We annoy the living hell out of each other. I'll cuddle with him when he clearly doesn't feel like being cuddled with and when I'm doing things like cooking dinner or washing my face or brushing my teeth, he'll come up behind me at random times and hump my butt, squeeze my boobs or lick—yes, lick—my cheek. He annoys the shit out of me and I annoy the shit out of him but I wouldn't have it any other way. I think we're just getting comfortable around each other finally. We've been dating for two months and he's finally comfortable enough around me to fart and stuff. I'll burp around him but I'll never, ever, ever fart around him. Ever. "No, I've got her." I walk my hands down from his waist to his butt. "You just go get dressed, okay?" I squeeze his butt cheeks one good time and finally let him go. He touches my butt as I walk away. Dreamily, I sigh and make my way to Lyla's bedroom. Again, I don't want to jinx anything but I'm really happy with my life right now. Sure I wish I had a job but things could seriously be worse. I genuinely am happy with the way things are right now.

I open up Lyla's bedroom door and quietly tiptoe into her room. I don't know how she's going to react to waking up. We don't usually have to wake Lyla up; she wakes up on her own. Alex and I are usually awake by the time she wakes up in the morning and she just comes downstairs on her own. This is pretty much the first time we've had to wake her up for something for one and for two, she was going off last night about how she didn't even want to go to preschool. I tried so hard to make it fun for her and she just wasn't having it. I had her help me pick out her clothes to make it fun and she was unresponsive. I had her help me put her supplies in her backpack and she wasn't even happy about it. I tried to make going to bed early fun for her and she just cried about how she didn't want to go to bed early. I tried so hard and she just wasn't having any parts of preschool. So waking her up for it should be fun. I turn on the lamp on her nightstand instead of turning on her big bright light.

Her cheek is smashed against her pillow, Lionel is tucked neatly under her arm and she's sleeping pretty hard. She's laying on her stomach with her head turned to the side and her hair is all over the place. "…Lyla." I place my hand in the middle of her back and rub. "Lyla…wake up." I gently shake her. "Wake up." Her eyebrows wrinkle and her lips rub hard against each other and she whines. "Wake up…you gotta go to school." I start pulling her blankets off of her. She whines again and turns her head away from me. "Don't ignore me. You gotta get up so you can go to school." I pull all the covers off her body and lift up her nightgown around her butt. I stick my finger in the base of her pull-up to see if she wet herself at all through the night and I'm pleased to find that it's dry. We've been trying to work towards getting her to sleep in underwear through the night as well but the last time we put her in underwear to sleep in, she pissed all in her bed so we started sticking her in pull-ups through the night. "Wake up." I pat her butt. She buries her face in her pillow and whines yet again. "Come on, brat. You're waking up." I didn't want to be forceful but I have a feeling that if I'm not forceful, she's not going to get up out of the bed and we're going to end up being late. I smuggle my hands underneath her torso and lift her up. "Get up."

"Noooo mommy…" She leans back, trying to get out of my grasp and starts wailing. "I no wanna…" It's not long before the actual tears start. "No…no…" She stops trying to sprawl her body out and eventually, she just clonks her head down on my shoulder and cries. She's acting like a goddamn teenager. Despite her tears, I carry her over to her dresser and sit her down on top of it so I can put underwear on her. She wore her hair out to bed last night so when she puts her head down to cry some more, all her hair spills to the front of her face. She's really just sitting here crying her eyes out over the fact that I woke her up. I ignore her and open up one of her drawers. I pluck a pair of tiny pick panties up and unfold them. I slide her down off the dresser and kneel down on the floor in front of her. I pull her nightgown off over her head and sit it down on the floor. She sticks her thumb in her mouth and wipes her eyes with her other hand while she continues to throw a tantrum. I peel her pull-up apart and place it next to her nightgown. "I…" She hiccups and sniffs. "I no go mommy!" I hold her underwear open and even though she's telling me that she's not going, she knows damn well that she's going because she steps into her underwear for me. I pull them up on her hips and leave her standing there half naked while I grab the outfit I ironed last night for her. As soon as I turn my back, she flops down in the middle of the floor and sits on her butt. "No go…"

I walk her clothes over to her and kneel down in front of her again. Her crying doesn't bother me. It doesn't annoy me and it doesn't make me feel bad. It literally has no effect on me at all. I could care less about her tears. She's going to preschool. I shove the shirt over her head and force her arms through the holes, ignoring her screaming the entire time. I stand her up and make her step into the skirt. Once it's on her, I adjust the skirt so it's resting right above her ankles like it should be and I pull at her shirt too. I put the sandals down and make her step into those too. I buckle them around her feet tightly and stand up. I grab onto her hand so I can lead her to the bathroom but she yanks away from me and screams. "Lyla!" I kneel down again so that I'm eyelevel with her. "It is alright, honey. I promise it's alright. You are not gonna die. There's no reason for you to be screaming like that. Knock it off. You hear me?" I hold both her hands and force her to look at me. "It doesn't matter how much crying you do…you're still going. You can kick and scream and yell all you want but you're still going. So either you cooperate with me and come get your hair done up all pretty or I'll let you go to preschool with your hair looking like it does right now. It doesn't matter to me but either way, you're going to school. So do you want your hair to be pretty or messy? Which one?" She sniffs and stops crying just like that. "That's what I thought." I stand up again and escort her to the bathroom.

Without a word, I grab her toothbrush, wet it, stick some toothpaste on it, wet it again and hand it to her. She doesn't say anything. She just starts brushing her teeth like a good girl. I rummage through her hair accessory drawer for something brown to match her outfit. She doesn't own anything brown, so I settle for an orange headband with a silver flower off to the side of it. The orange will match since the flowers on her outfit are multicolored. She hands her slobbery, toothpaste-covered toothbrush back to me and stands on her tiptoes to spit in the sink. I rinse off her toothbrush and stick it back in the holder. I cup my hand and fill it up with water. I hold my hand to her mouth so she can rinse and she rinses and spits in the sink again. I know good and well that she didn't brush her teeth the way they need to be brushed but I'm trying to teach her some independence and resist babying her. So I'll just brush them real good before she goes to bed tonight. I grab her washcloth, wet it and scrub her face real good to make sure she doesn't have crust in her eyes or anything. "Mommy…" She pushes my hands away once she's had enough of me washing her face. "What I gonna do at preschool?"

"You're gonna learn about things. You're gonna learn your ABCs, how to spell your name, how to count…you're gonna learn a lot of things that you can come home and tell me and daddy about. You're gonna have fun." I pick her up and sit her on the back of the toilet seat so I can do her hair. "You're about to be so much smarter than me and daddy." I pick up a comb and run it through her hair. She's very tender-headed so she flinches when I untangle some knots with the comb. "You're gonna go and learn and have fun and when you get home, you can tell us all about it. Doesn't that sound good?"

"…I know ABC. I know how my name is spelled like and I know how to count." She flinches again when I comb out her natural part. The natural part of her hair is a lot like mine. It's off to the side and it allows her side bangs to come out perfectly. There were a few things that Alex and I meant to do before we started preschool but we just didn't get around to it with her being taken away and all. The only thing we got to do was get her hair cut yesterday. She got her bad ends trimmed off and her bangs evened out again. We meant to take her to the dentist to get her teeth cleaned and we meant to take her to get a physical because she needs a couple shots but we didn't get around to it. She has a dentist appointment on Thursday and she goes for her shots on Friday, I do believe. "They teach me things I already know?"

"You don't know your ABCs." I start teasing her just to keep her interested in talking long enough to hold her head still. I grab a chunk of her hair and pick up the curling iron. "Let me hear your ABCs."

"A...BCDEFG...HIJK... elemeno P. Q R S. T U V. WX. Y and Z. Now I know my ABCs, next time won't you sing with me?" She swings her feet. "See? I know them."

"Wow…" I gently pull the curling iron out of her hair and smile when I see that my spiral curl held up perfectly. "But you don't know how to spell your name." I grab another piece of her hair and start curling it. "How do you spell Lyla?"

"…L-Y-L-A. K-A…" She stumbles over her last name, which makes me giggle to myself. "K-A-R-E-V."

"Good job!" I run a comb through her curls to loosen them a little bit and grab another chunk of hair. "How about counting? How high can you count? Lemme hear." I comb out the next curl and move on to her last strand of hair.

" 10…Levens…Telb…Um…Firteen, fifteen…sixteen…seventeen…eighteen, nineteen, twenny!" She skipped fourteen but hey, that's pretty good for a four year old.

"Wow, you really are smart!" I turn off the curling iron and ease the headband on her head. "I can only count to ten. You can count to twenty?!" I help her off the toilet. "You go girl. Gimme five." I hold my hand out and she smacks it. "…You gotta go pee pee?" She shakes her head. "You sure?" She nods. "Okay. Make sure you tell your teacher if you have to go pee pee while you're in school." I kneel down in front of her again so I can fix her hair from a frontal view. I left her bangs straight, so I make sure they're laying down right. I fix her shirt and her skirt and smile. "All pretty. Go show daddy."

"Daaaaaddy…" She walks past me and leaves out of the bathroom.

 **X X X**

"Come right in and find your name." The skinny, black-haired and blue-eyed woman that we met the other day waves the few of us that just walked through the door inside and welcomes the kids to go find their names. It's good to see that me and Alex aren't the only parents that didn't just drop their kids off and bolt to the door. There are about twenty or so kids crammed into this room and twice as many nervous parents. I wasn't nervous until we pulled up. Once she had her backpack on her back and her lunchbox in her hand, I started to feel a little bit sad but mostly because I wasn't going to have my buddy with me anymore. For the last two weeks and a few days, Lyla and I have been home alone together and I was sad because I'm going to be all alone today. She stepped out onto the porch to get in the car and that's when I started taking pictures with my phone. I took like ten pictures of her carrying her backpack and her lunchbox wearing her cute little outfit. I'm nothing compared to Alex though. He took like thirty pictures of her, claiming that people at his job asked for pictures. When we pulled up in the parking lot, I started to get a little bit nervous. It kind of just clicked that we're leaving her here. She's going to preschool for an entire day. She's not going to be with me or with Alex. I hope she makes friends and I hope kids are nice to her.

Lyla wraps her arms around Alex's leg and holds on for dear life. I take a moment to look around and really make myself familiar with the place she's about to spend hours at. There are books, colorful posters on the walls, a big circle table with nametags at each chair, a rug with ABCs and 123s on it, an area towards the back with a fake kitchen and fake food, toys coming out the ears, a long table with computers on top of it, cubbies with coat hooks underneath of them…it looks like a very nice environment. I'm pleased. "Come on, booger. You gotta let me go." Alex shakes his leg to get her off. "You'll like preschool. You'll like it and you'll see me and mommy later." He puts his hand on the back of her head. "Let me go." Lyla shakes her head. "You have to." I look around at the cubbies and the table to see if I can spot her name. On the table, her name is written on a pink number line and on the wall above the cubby, her name is written on a purple piece of paper. "Look at all the other kids. Look what they're doing." Alex points to the wall. "They're hanging their stuff up. Go hang your bookbag up and put your lunch in your cubby. Go." She shakes her head again.

"Mr. and Mrs. Karev…pleasure meeting you again." After dismissing a little boy with spiky blonde hair's parents, her teacher comes over to me and Alex and lets her classroom aid named Miss Diane direct the kids that are already parentless to their seats. I decide that correcting her and telling her that I'm not Mrs. Karev is pointless. "Is someone a little nervous?" She squats down and looks at Lyla. "Hi Lyla." She gives her a warm smile and a wave but Lyla still doesn't budge. In fact, she squeezes Alex's leg harder. "I'm really excited to play with you and learn things today. Why don't you go hang up your backpack? And put your lunch away?"

"You gotta go, booger. You got to." Alex tries shaking his leg again. "She's just really shy…I'm hoping this will break her of that." He starts prying Lyla's hands off of him. "All of her supplies are in her bag like you asked. Her blanket for nap time and her pillow are in there too. He finally gets Lyla to let him go but she stands very close to him. Her teacher stands upright and holds her hand out to her but Lyla won't take it. "Daddy's gotta go now, boogie. I'm gonna be late for work." He eases toward the door but Lyla grabs his leg again. "Ly." He pries her off and kneels down. "I gotta go. I'll see you later. When mommy comes back to get you later, you're not even gonna want to come home. That's how much fun you're gonna have." Lyla looks like she's very close to tears. I honestly think her issue with preschool goes a little beyond just being shy. I think she has some separation anxiety because the last time she went without Alex for a while, she ended up not seeing him for a long time. "Kiss and a hug." He mumbles and holds his arms out. She gives him a tight hug and pecks him on his lips. "I'll see you later. I love you, booger butt." He rubs her back and lets her go. He stands upright. "Come on, Jo. I'm gonna be late….and I still gotta drop you off at home."

I nod my head at him. "I'll see you later baby." I kneel down too. I don't even have to tell her to, she just automatically gives me a hug and a kiss. Even though she just pecked me on the lips, I still kiss her cheek anyway. "Be good, okay?" I hold her hands. She nods her head at me. "I'll miss you. But I'll see you real soon." She won't even look at me. Her head is down and she seems so sad. I stroke her hands. "I love you." I think I see a tear trickle down her cheek. "Hey…no tears. You're gonna have fun." I wipe her tear away and kiss her cheek once again. "Buh byes." I wave my hand. "Love you boo boo."

"Luff you too mama." She whispers. I smooth her curls back and stand up so we can leave once and for all. Before she can get the chance to really miss us too badly, me and Alex head for the door as quickly as possible. "Daddy, wait! Wait!" Alex looks back but I grab his arm to let him know that we have to go. If we stay, it'll just be harder on her and harder on him and it'll be so messy. I pull him towards the door with me and look back at Lyla too, just as we exit the room. Her teacher is trying to calm her down but she's reaching for Alex. "Daddy! Daddy, don't leave me!" Yeah, it's not just her shyness that's making it hard for her to be left. She's still shaken up about being taken away from him and that's understandable but if she's ever going to get over her separation anxiety, we have to leave her here and show her that it's okay. "Daddy! Wait, daddy! Come back!" We can still hear her screaming even though we already left the room. "Daddy!"

"You okay?" I ask him as I hold the door open so we can go back out to the car.

"Yeah." He nods. "A little hard to hear her calling me and not being able to go back, but I'm good. I'll be alright." He sighs and lets the door close behind us. "…Is it supposed to be this hard on me too?"

"It'll get easier." It was a little rough for me to hear her crying like that too, I won't lie. Especially when I know that the reason she's crying isn't only because she's shy. Sure her shyness has something to do with the fact that she doesn't want to be left but the reason she's crying is way deeper than shyness. Knowing that and having to leave her anyway…that is kind of hard. But like I told Alex…

It'll get easier.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Yeah, Jo curled her hair and everything…didn't she do a nice job?" I hold my phone at an angle so that all the nurses plus Arizona can look at the pictures I'm scrolling through. I've never really been the type to want to brag and show off pictures of my kid. The nurses do that all the time and so does Arizona. They shove pictures of their kids down everyone's throats and everyone is forced to say how cute the kids are. I never really was the type to do anything like that until today, that is. Suddenly, I find myself in the proud father position as I show them a bunch of pictures that I took of Lyla today. I admit…I went a little snap happy. I took pictures of her on the porch, pictures of her outside the YMCA building, pictures of her getting in and out of the car…I went a little nuts. "And she had the little outfit…you see her lunchbox? Hello Kitty…" I zoom in and show them how nicely Jo curled her hair this morning. "She looked all pretty this morning… I almost shed a tear."

"She's precious, Alex." Nurse Jackie pulls my hand closer so she can get a better look at the phone. "Look how adorable." She smiles, which makes me smirk too. I scroll to the left for more pictures. "Is that your girlfriend?" She points to Jo in the picture. Jo's standing beside Lyla wearing the pair of jeans she threw on this morning and the t-shirt I bought her at Disney. She looks a little rough but she's smiling anyway and hugging Lyla. Of course I had to get a picture of both of my girls on a day like this. I think I might put this one as my screensaver on my phone. I nod my head to answer Jackie's question and scroll to the side, which is yet another picture of Jo and Lyla. "Your girlfriend's a knockout."

"I know. Sometimes I wish she was ugly so guys wouldn't stare." I don't even say thank you when people call Jo pretty anymore. It's just a fact to me these days. I already know my girlfriend is the most beautiful chick on the planet. Both my girls are gorgeous. What can I say? I'm a magnet for good looking women. "But then again…" I scroll to another picture. "Nobody wants Jo. They might think they do but if a man stole her from me, they'd give her back and tell me they don't know how the hell I deal with her." I chuckle and everyone around me laughs at my comment. I wholeheartedly believe that. I took Jo out to dinner and for a movie last week after our argument and the whole time we were out, guys were staring at her and practically drooling over her. It pissed me off for a second but I swear, if a man tried to pull a robbery on me and take Jo from me, I'd let him. I'd let him have her because I'm 90% sure he'd bring her back like "dude, how the fuck do you deal with her?" But that's my Jo though. I love everything about her. Even the things I hate about her, I love. I don't even know how I put up with her mood swings, her anger issues and her piss-pour attitude but I do and I'm whipped. That's my babe.

"Why haven't you met her kids yet?" Nurse Patty asks me. "She met yours. Why haven't you met hers?"

"Jo doesn't have kids." I shake my head and finally put my phone away once we get through all the pictures. Speaking of my girls, I wonder what both of them are doing. I'm on my lunch hour right now, which means it's no earlier than 12:00 and no later than 1:30 so I can guess what they're doing. Jo's probably sleeping. She was tired as hell this morning so I wouldn't be surprised if she was still deep under the covers at this point. One thing I've learned about Jo is that the girl loves to sleep and HATES being woken up. I learned that the hard way just last week. So after our argument…I was kind of sucking up to her because I knew she wasn't happy with me. Three days after our argument, I was still trying to kiss her ass and I thought it would be nice if I woke her up with a little surprise. I woke up before her so I just thought I'd do something nice, you know? So I went underneath the covers and tried waking her up with a little bit of oral. I thought she'd like that. She's always talking about how good with my mouth I am and she had just said the night before that she was craving some good head. She doesn't sleep with pants on so I went straight to taking her underwear off. I got to kissing her inner thigh and I actually started eating her out before she woke up and said "can you please stop?" I told her that I was sorry and I explained that I thought she'd like that and she said, and I quote, "hell no I don't like being woken up. What the fuck?" She was awake after that so she did end up letting me eat her out but I had to learn the lesson the hard way. "She's only 29. And nope, she doesn't have kids."

"She doesn't?" Patty sounds surprised. "Damn. She looks so natural with yours in the pictures…"

"That's 'cause she is." I stick my phone back in my pocket. So I'm guessing Jo's still knocked out. And if I had to guess with Lyla…I'd say it's probably lunch time. She's probably enjoying her peanut butter and banana sandwich right now. "She's natural at it. She'd be a damn good mother…she IS a damn good mother. But she doesn't have her own kids."

"Do you plan on changing that?" Arizona's the one that pries this time. She kicks up on her wheely sneakers and suspends herself by bracing her elbows against the counter. "You should've seen the way she handled this baby a couple weeks ago. She doesn't have kids but it sure seems like she missed her calling."

"Yeah, Alex? Are you open to having more kids?" Nurse Jackie chimes in.

I shrug my shoulders. "I'm still young so I wouldn't really care. I mean honestly, I don't want any more kids. Lyla's enough for me and I'm perfectly content with her. I don't want anymore."

"But what if you and Jo stay together and get married? What about then?" Arizona continues.

"I've only been with Jo for two months. We've been messing for four but we've only been together for two…almost two, to be exact. It's still too soon for me to say if I'd even want to marry her. Let alone have kids with her. We have so much crap to work through. We still have to get to know each other better, but…" I clear my throat. "Put it this way…With the way things are going right now…with Jo, yes. If things stayed the same and kept going as well as they're going at the moment, then yes. I would want more kids but only…if they're Jo's kids, you know what I mean? With Jo, yes I want more kids. I'd want one more with her. But with anybody else, no thanks. I don't want any more kids unless they're with Jo. But she can't have kids so I'm content with just having Lyla."

"She can't have kids?" Patty pries. "What's wrong with her?"

"She had to have something like a hysterectomy. Let's leave it at that." I simplify it to avoid telling Jo's business to people that don't need to know it.

"Well that's sad." For once in her life, Arizona's not so bright and peppy. She actually sounds solemn and remorseful. "She seems like she really wants them. That's always the case though, isn't it? The people that want kids and would treat them right can't have them but the people that don't want them and abuse them are the most fertile things on the planet."

"Can you tell me where Dr. Karev is?" Off in the distance, I hear someone ask for me. I tune out of the conversation I was just having with Zone and the nurses and turn around to see who it is that's looking for me. The voice sounded familiar but I'm not sure who it was. When I turn around, I see her and immediately crack a lopsided grin. Speaking of the devil… She's asking Nurse James where I am and he's pointing her off to where I am. She's wearing the same pair of blue jeans she threw on this morning, a pair of black flip flop sandals and a bright yellow Polo shirt. Her hair is tied up in a very lazy bun that looks more like a ponytail because it sagged to the middle of her back since her hair is so heavy. Still grinning, I leave the nurses' station and walk towards where she and James are standing. "Oh…hey!" She looks surprised to see me.

"What are you doing here?" I put my hands on her hips and lean in for a kiss. She raises up on her tiptoes and kisses me on my lips for a brief second. From the corner of my eye, I glance back at the nurses' station and see that they're all gushing over how I just kissed her but it's probably only because we were literally just talking about her. "I was just thinking about you."

"I um…" She looks over at the nurses' station too before she looks back at me and catches her train of thought. "I brought you lunch." She holds up a white bag with the Wendy's logo on it. "Baconator, fries, frosty." She sweeps a piece of her hair out of her face. "I was just in the neighborhood and I figured you were probably hungry and sick of eating hospital food. I stopped at Wendy's and thought maybe you'd want some." My grin turns into a full blown smile, which I make fade away. I hate smiling. I look like a creep when I smile because I don't really know how to smile. She's so perfect. She didn't have to bring me anything. "I was hoping you weren't in surgery or anything."

"Nah, no surgeries today…" I move the same piece of hair that she just moved out of her face again. "You didn't have to bring me lunch. That was nice of you." I brush my lips against her cheek again and hear a bunch of "aww"s come from the nurses' station, which makes me flick them all off. "What do you mean you were in the neighborhood though?" I open up the bag of food and grab a french fry. "What are you doing in Pensacola?"

"I had to go drop off my child abuse clearances." She flashes me her perfect, pearly white teeth and I stop mid-bite of my french fry. Is she saying… "I made myself something to eat for breakfast and I was getting ready to lie back down when my phone started ringing. J.M. Tate wants to interview me….Stats teacher."

"That's awesome, babe!" I close the bag of food quickly and pick her up off her feet. "That's so good." I kiss her cheek even though I have chewed up french fry in my mouth. "I'm so proud of you…I'm so happy for you. That's so great. And that's one of the positions you really wanted, isn't it? You wanted a Stats position." She's smiling so wide and I can just tell that she's happy. Good. She deserves to be happy. I'm happy because she's happy. "That's so great, babe. You know you basically have the position. You know you got the job, don't you? There's no way they're going to pass up an Ivy League graduate."

"I'm trying not to get my hopes up. I go for an interview next Thursday and we'll see how that goes." Her smile is telling a different story though. "I'm just glad somebody called me!"

"…I think we should celebrate." I lower her back down to the floor. "We should celebrate."

"…Right now?" She raises her eyebrow.

"No, tonight…we should go out to dinner. Me, you and Ly. Ly would enjoy that after her day at preschool and we could celebrate you getting a call back." I finally swallow my food and kiss her on her lips. "I'm so happy for you." She looks down at the ground and smiles. I can tell she's really trying to be cool about this but I can also tell that she's bursting with excitement. She doesn't want to get her hopes up but she should. There's no way they're going to pass up an Ivy League Statistics teacher. She got the job. "We could celebrate right now too, if you'd like." I wink at her. I've got something that'll cheer her up. Twenty minutes in an on-call room might cheer her up.

"…You are working, you sicko." She pushes my face playfully and starts laughing. "Maybe tonight."

"Or I can just take you to an on-call room right now." I grab her hand. "People do the deed on the job all the time. CEOs bang in offices all the time. You see it all over TV…the wife brings her husband lunch and they end up rattling some desk drawers loose." I start pulling her but she resists me. "Come on, Jo. We can celebrate. It'll be fun…just twenty minutes. I'll make it quick. We don't even have to undress all the way. I can pull these pants down, you can pull yours down…underwear can move to the side…it'll be hot."

"What if we get caught? Or something…" She starts looking around but I can tell the minor dirty talk is turning her on a little bit.

"We won't. But we might…and that's what's gonna make it fun."


	60. Think It Through

**A/N:** **M** rated content in this chapter. Reader discretion advised.

* * *

I lock my fingers inside hers and lead her towards the nearest on-call room while she drags her feet and looks around. I can tell that she's nervous but it's probably because she doesn't know on-call rooms are and she doesn't know the crap that goes on in them on a daily basis. Granted, I can kind of see her point and I know why should would be nervous and afraid that we'd get caught because there _is_ a very real possibility that we could get caught having sex in here but truthfully, everyone around that could catch us is too busy doing their own thing. It'll be twenty minutes in an on-call room; just me and her. And yeah, we could get caught but that's what makes it all the more fun. It's fun, it's new, it's exciting, something I've never done and something I know for a fact that Jo's never done. It's like something you see in a porno movie, right? The hot wife or girlfriend brings lunch to your job and you end up eating more than just the sandwich, if you know what I mean. I wrap my hand around the doorknob and twist it, hoping that it turns and the door isn't locked. Sure enough, the door opens and we're thrust into an empty, secluded on-call room. I drag Jo in behind me and finally let her hand go. She looks around the room nervously, wringing her hands back and forth and looking all around.

I put the bag of food down on the table and lock the door behind us to ensure that nobody's going to come in and disturb us. Once the door is locked, I turn back around and stand behind her. I put my hands on her waist, tilt my head and start kissing her neck. "Why are you so nervous?" I stroke her hips. "Nothing is going to happen…" I place my lips just below her earlobe and suck on her neck for a moment. "Nobody's gonna come in here." I move her hair away from her neck since I got a mouthful of it and slip my hands up her shirt. "Just you…and me…" I place a trail of soft kisses down her neck, all the way to her collarbone which makes her close her eyes and tilt her head back. Jo's unlike any other girl I've ever had sex with, in more ways than I can even explain. I'm not just talking about how amazing the sex is and I'm not talking about how differently I feel every time our bodies connect whether I'm on top of her, behind her or face to face with her core. I _do_ always find that I love Jo a little bit more after each time we have sex, but that's not what I'm talking about. Jo's different in a sense that it doesn't take her nearly as long to get in the mood as other women. All I have to do is kiss the spot right below her earlobe once or twice and she's already dripping wet. I bring my hands together in the middle of her waist and unsnap the button of her jeans. "You'd be surprised what I can do to you in twenty minutes." I lock my fingers around the waistband of her jeans and start pulling them down a little bit.

She parts her legs to make it easier for me to pull her tight jeans down and once they're at her thighs, she reaches back and grabs ahold of my head while she turns her neck but not her body. She holds my face still and starts kissing me hard, massaging her tongue against mine with the most intensity. I cup my hands around her waist and pull her closer toward me so that her ass is against my groin and she's able to feel how hard I'm getting. I keep her braced against my body with one hand and with the other, I stuff it into her jeans and between her legs. As I expected they would be, her underwear are damp. We've only got twenty minutes at best in here before I have to get back to work, so I'd rather not waste time with foreplay. I take my hand out of her pants and continue pulling her jeans down. I don't have time to fight with laying her down in the right position on the bed, I don't have time to take her underwear off…I don't even have time to go down on her and I really want to. I'm gonna make the most of twenty minutes if it kills me. I put my hands back on her hips and push her forward to take the two or three steps it'd take for her to be standing in front of the desk next to the bed. She catches my drift and naturally, she leans forward and bends over the desk, propping herself up on her elbows. With one of my hands, I start untying the drawstrings on my scrub pants and with the other, I push her yellow shirt up so it's out of my way.

She leans her head forward and quickly jerks it backward, as if she's trying to move her hair out of her face without using her hands. I drop my pants down around my ankles and pull hers completely down around her ankles as well. Swiftly, I unbutton the two buttons in the center of my boxers and pull myself through. Before I even put it in though, I take a moment to just rub her ass. I've mentioned before that she has a nice ass but it bears repeating. Jo's a fairly tiny person. She's short and she can't possibly weigh anything more than 130 pounds but she's pretty thick. She's lightweight, skinny and easy to carry but she's thick too. She has the perfect body. Flat stomach with hips that curve outward and fill out her bottom half…her ass is so perfect too. She has those two little dimples in her lower back and they drive me crazy. She's perfect; no other way to put it. I would like to take her underwear off of her because they're nothing but an inconvenience to me but like I said, I don't have time to waste with taking off her panties. So I just conveniently grab them and pull them to the side so they're out of my way.

As soon as she feels me move her underwear out of the way, she rests flat against the table with her arms resting outward and her hands gripping the edge of the desk. I hold myself at the base of my erection and slowly ease it in. As soon as I get the tip in, her whole body tenses and she arches her back, pushing her ass out when she does. She gasps softly and rests her head against the desk as well. Since my tip's already in, I take my hand away and put it on her hips. I grip her hips to hold her steady and start out slowly with my thrusts. As usual, she's so tight and wet that my head feels like it's going to pop off. While I thrust forward, I pull her backward so I'm going as deep as I possibly can but I have to grit my teeth. I take a deep breath and look down, watching myself draw back and push back in with every thrust. Every time I pull myself out of her, I pull out wetter. I roll my eyes up to the ceiling and press my lips together in a hard line. It doesn't make any sense for her to be this good in bed. It doesn't make any sense for something to be this snug and slippery at the same time. I lick my lips and focus on her underwear. I can't think about how good she feels…I'll bust so quick if I do that. Her underwear are pretty. They're bright, hot pink with white polka dots all over them and Victoria's Secret written across the waistband. I put my hands on her ass and squeeze it. I slow down the thrusting mostly for myself and reach forward to rub her clit.

"Uhhh!" She lets a very soft moan slip through her lips before she props herself up on her elbows again. My pulse beats loud and fast in my ears and instead of trying to limit myself, I just start thrusting faster and faster until finally, my thrusting matches the pace that my heart is beating at. One of the drawers in the desk falls down and crashes to the floor in a loud clang but I don't stop. In fact, the drawer falling out of the desk somehow motivates me to pump her harder. Her jaw drops and her mouth falls open but nothing comes out of it. I lean down and lay flat against her body and kiss her on her cheek while I slow the pace down again just to make sure I'm getting inside of her deep enough. "Yes…uhhhh!" She moans while I'm kissing her cheek, which makes me smirk because if I make Jo moan, I have to be doing something right because she's pretty quiet…usually. I grab her hips again and pull her all the way back so there's nothing left of my erection hanging out. She puts her head back down and squeals. "Oooh!"

She leans up and tries to stand up put I force her to lay back down on the desk. "No, stay down…" I run my hand along her back and keep her down against the desk. I lean forward again and kiss her on her lips this time but she moans into my mouth. I stroke my fingers through the lengths of her hair, admiring her beauty. Every time I'm intimate with Jo, I love her more afterwards. Even if we're having fun, rough, hard sex like we are right now; I still make it a point to let her know much I admire and appreciate her body. She's beautiful, that's for sure. She's beautiful and there's something about our bodies joining together as one when I'm inside of her that makes me just fall deeper in love with her. I handle her body with care every single time I'm inside of her and I make sure that whatever we do is pleasurable and enjoyable for her before I even make sure it is for myself. There's something about her that's just special. I can't describe it, I can't put it into words and I can't even begin to understand it. All I know is that with Jo, sex isn't something I just do for fun. Hell yeah it's fun, but that's not the sole reason I do it. I use it as an opportunity to profess my adoration for her and to me? That's what sex should be. When you're being intimate with someone you love, you should see sex for what it really is. She's special to me and every single time I lay down to sleep with her, I don't _fuck_ her; I make _love_ to her. I kiss my favorite beauty mark, the one by her lip and sit back up. She doesn't seem like she's comfortable and that's probably because the desk she's bent over is kind of at an awkward height so even though I love doing it from behind, I slow it down and pull it out of her anyway.

I take it upon myself to take her feet out of her jeans. She helps me by kicking off her sandals. Once her pants are all the way off, I grab her arms and make her turn around so that she's facing me. She's still leaning against the desk but she is facing me and even though it's kind of dark in this on-call room, I can still look into her eyes. Her hair is barely in a bun anymore and strands of it are resting on her shoulders and crowding in front of her face. Her eyes are low but lust-filled and she's licking her lips as if she wants to kiss me. She's so damn beautiful. I can't even contain myself anymore; I lunge forward and put my hands all over her beautiful body while my lips occupy hers. I kiss her hard; hungry for more and yearning to continue tasting her breath. She throws her arms around my neck and starts coiling her fingers all through my hair, grazing her fingernails along my scalp while she does it. Kissing her hasn't done anything but make me want her even more. God, I need her. I place my hands underneath her ass and lift her up. Instinctively, she wraps her legs around my waist and holds my face hostage while she keeps kissing me.

Since she won't let me go long enough to see what I'm doing, I blindly feel around below my waist and hers and somehow, I manage to slip her panties to the side again and put myself back inside of her. This time, she stops kissing me but she keeps her arms around my neck but she burrows her face deep in the crook of my neck. I can feel her breathing unevenly against my neck. One of her hands is still stroking the back of my head but for the most part, she's unresponsive and laying against my shoulder with her face in my neck. I wrap one arm around her waist so she doesn't fall and brace myself against the desk with my free hand so I don't lose my balance once I start moving her. In order to allow both of us to get used to it first, I start slowly pulling her toward my body and gently allowing her to slip backward. I pull her forward, allow her to slip back and pull her forward again. She sucks in a breath against my neck and lets it out without a peep. I can tell she likes this though, because she just got so wet that I can feel her through the fabric of my boxers. Once I've got a steady rhythm and a hold on how to do this standing up, I take my hand away from the desk and stuff both my arms underneath her legs. She takes her hands from around my neck and holds onto my shoulders and to my surprise, she actually helps me.

I've never had sex standing up before but I'm starting to think maybe she's done it before because she grips my shoulders and starts moving the bottom half of her body on and off of my shaft. "Mmmm…" She closes her eyes and throws her head back but never stops…basically riding me while I'm standing up. If she wants to ride me, okay. That's fine, she can ride me all she wants. But I'm starting to get a cramp and we're gonna have to do this the more traditional way. I put my hands on her butt and pull her close to me so I can give her another kiss. While we're kissing, I walk backwards, carrying her over to the bed. Once the backs of my legs touch the bunk bed's frame, I lie down with her still on top of me. Since the top bunk is resting over our heads and she can't sit all the way up while she's on top of me, she straddles me as usual but lies down flat against my chest. Her face is buried in my neck again but she's moving her hips back and forth so fast that I have to reach up and grab the bars of the top bunk to bear with it. Ooh my god, she's amazing on top. She's amazing. Oh god…I try to think of something else again but I can't. The only thing I can think of is everything that's going on at the bottom half of my body. Her lips are brushing along my neck while she moves back and forth in a humping motion so fast that the bed is squeaking. I lock my eyes up on the top bunk and just…how did I not know she was this good on top? She's never been on top of me and that's where I went wrong. I went wrong…I went so wrong. If I knew she was this good at riding, I would've let her do it so long ago. It's so quiet in here that the only sounds are the squeaking of the bed's mattress and squishing noise her crotch is making every single time she bucks her hips forward. She's entirely too wet…she's THIS wet and she didn't even orgasm yet. "Mmmm…fuck." She whispers in my ear and starts swirling her hips in circles. She's definitely not a beginner at this.

I'm about to bust. I'm about to bust in like two seconds and if I bust, I'll go soft and if I go soft…she hasn't even orgasmed yet. "Slow down for a second…" I take my hands off the bars on top of the bed we're laying in and put them on her hips. When I try to slow her down, she resists me and starts moving back and forth again, faster this time. I take another deep breath and blow it out hard. "I-I'm serious." I stutter because I can literally feel it building up. I try to stop her again but she just ignores me once more and this time, she starts bouncing. She puts her hands flat on my chest, squeezes the fabric of my scrub top and starts bouncing up and down. "You gotta slow…down." She shakes her head at me and slides down all the way on my shaft. Did she just tell me no? She starts bouncing a little faster. Yep, she told me no. Well if she insists on making me cum…

I pull up her shirt so it's out of my way and stuff my hand between her legs while she rides me. If she insists on making me bust, I gotta find a way to make her orgasm too before I go soft. I start teasing her clit real fast with my index finger and that makes her whimper. "O-oh…god…" She squeezes my scrub top harder. The faster she rides me, the faster I rub her. "Oh my god, Alex." She takes her hand off of my chest and puts it down between her legs with mine. She squeezes my hand, trying to get me to stop but I just rub her a little faster. She stops riding me and slams her head down on my chest, breathing hard and heavy. That's what I thought. She doesn't want to get into a "who can make who orgasm first?" battle with me. She'll never win. Since I've got her to stop riding me, I put both my hands on her hips and hold her still. I bend my knees to adjust my own positioning and once I'm comfortable, I hold her still and start thrusting upwards. With a smirk on my face, I kiss her jaw and pull back so I can watch the sexy faces she makes while I pound her. Her eyes are closed and she's biting down on one half of her lip. She's muffling her moans by squeezing her lips together but they're coming out in sort of a whimper and I don't even think she can control it. "Hmmmm….mmm…mmmm….mmm…" Her eyebrows are all wrinkled and her face is starting to relax which again, makes me smirk and thrust upwards a little harder. Her walls constrict around me and her insides get a little hotter, so I slow down. Her arms are shaking since her legs can't and she's breathing hard. I press my lips neatly to her throat allow myself to finally bust.

I'm honestly proud of myself. She had me ready to bust three different times and I held off. I held off and I lasted and I had her everywhere in this on-call room. I had her bent over the desk, up against the wall, standing up, on the bed…I could've had her on the floor but I wasn't thinking. But damn, we really tore this room up. That was the best sex I've ever had. I know I say that a lot but that's because every single time I sleep with her, the current time tops the last time and it's just a vicious cycle. Her body goes limp against mine and I can tell she wants to lay down on my chest but since I'm holding her up, she can't move too well. Before I let her lay down, I kiss her on her lips one more time and stare at her face. Her eyes are still closed as she's still recovering from her orgasm. I sweep her sweaty hair away from her face and stroke her cheek. When she opens her eyes, one single tear trickles out of her left eye. I pause immediately. Why is she crying? Did I hurt her? I take my hands from around her waist and sit up, still inside of her and everything. "Jo? Jo, what happened? What's wrong?" I keep my hand behind her, resting against her lower back just so she won't fall back and hit her head. "What's wrong? What did I do?" She raises her eyebrows, blinks twice, wipes her tear away and shakes her head. She looks like she's fine but she's crying so something must be wrong, right? "Did I hurt you?" She shakes her head again and rubs her left eye hard. "Yes I did. What did I do? I hurt you, didn't I?"

"No." She runs her fingers through her hair and takes a deep breath. "You did the opposite of hurt me. That just felt too good." She fans herself. "That felt way too good." She takes another deep breath. "Damn..." She reaches back, ignoring the fact that I'm still inside of her and yanks her hair out of the barely bun. "I've never had sex so good that it made me want to cry. But that?" She shakes her head and shakes her hair with her hand. "That…was freaking great." She leans forward, hair messy down her back and gives me a kiss. I banged her so good that it made her want to cry? I've actually heard of that before. Especially when a girl's trying to pull away because it feels so good? Yep. I've heard of that before. I just can't believe I made her want to cry. "Thank you, baby." She sucks on my bottom lip for a couple seconds before she pulls away. "Thank you." Is she thanking me for an orgasm? She carefully slides off my lap and climbs out of the bed like it's nothing. "If I knew I was gonna come here and get the soul humped outta me, I would've worn shorts…instead of having to stuff my fat ass back in jeans." She picks up her jeans and I just watch her.

I think it's so sexy how she can go from having sex with me like that to acting like everything's normal within a matter of minutes. She doesn't stay in the bed and harp on the sex like most girls. She takes her orgasm and just carries on with her day in such a ladylike fashion. I find that so sexy. Without even looking, I stuff my junk back in and button my boxers back up, watching her the entire time. She shakes her jeans to turn them back from being inside out and starts stuffing her legs back into them. She wiggles to get them over her hips and eventually, she buttons them back up. She swings her hair over her shoulder like it's nothing to her, shakes it to the back of her body and ties it up in another bun. "Are you gonna eat that food? Because if not, I'll take it with me. I'll eat it my damn self." She sticks her feet back into her sandals.

I finally stand up and put my own scrub pants back on. "Are you kidding me?" I smooth my pants down and shove my shoes back on too. I kneel down and shove the drawer we knocked out back in the desk. "There's nothing like good sex and good food to follow it up." I snatch the bag off the desk and open it up. I head for the door and unlock it. She rolls her eyes at me and follows me out of the room. "I'm gonna go to the lounge and warm this up." I shut the door behind us. My boxers are sticking to my leg because they're uncomfortably wet but I guess it's the price I have to pay for having a lunchtime rendezvous while on the job. I don't think I thought this over as well as I thought I did. I already know that Jo gets unbelievably wet during sex. I mean, she splashes up on me every single time we have sex. Her crotch is like is a river. I should've known that leaving my boxers on would've been a mistake but I wasn't thinking. All I was thinking about was making the most of 20 minutes and now I have to walk around with a wet spot in the middle of my boxers. Great. "I'll see you at home?" I start walking her back towards the nurses' station since she'll know how to get out of here from there. "You're gonna grab Lyla, right?"

"Mhm." She nods her head and looks down at the floor while she walks. "She gets picked up at 3:00, right?"

"Right." We get back to the nurses' station so I stop walking. "I'll see you at home." I lean in and kiss her cheek. "Love you."

"I'll see you at home." She pats me on my back and turns to leave after I kiss her. Jo doesn't say "I love you too" back to me very often. She NEVER tells me that she loves me first and even when I tell her that I love her first, it's like pulling teeth to get her to say it back to me. I think she's only ever said it to me twice. I don't really mind it though. I guess it doesn't bother me too badly when she doesn't say it back because I kind of know that she does. I know she loves me. Her actions tell me so. She doesn't really need to say it but sometimes, it would be nice to hear her say it back. I watch her as she walks down the hall and disappears through the set of double doors that lead to the elevators. Maybe she's just not really the "I love you" type. That's fine. She doesn't have to tell me she loves me. I know she does.

"So…" Out of nowhere, Arizona approaches me and puts her hand on my back. I turn towards her to see what she wants. She has a look on her face that suggests that she knows something that I don't necessarily know so I wrinkle my brow at her. "How was the sex?" I grin. "Was it hot and sweaty? Couldn't have been much…you were only in there for half an hour."

"We didn't do anything." I lie straight to her face. "We just went in there to talk. She had something to tell me about something that happened back at home. We were talking."

"Yeah right." She taps my shoulder. "She brought a little more to you than lunch and everybody knows it." She winks at me and starts to walk away. But before she gets away from me for good, she backtracks and raises up on her tiptoes so she can whisper in my ear. "Next time you wanna lie to me, at least make sure your pants aren't on backwards."

I look down at my pants and find that she's right. I don't have the drawstrings in the front. I roll my eyes to the ceiling and feel my cheeks go red.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

I roll my windows up but not all the way because I don't want my car to get too hot when I'm not even going to be in this building for that long. I open up my door, climb out of my car, shut the door and lock it up behind myself. I tuck my hair behind my ears and start walking towards the entrance. I'm still pretty tired since I never really went back to sleep after I got Lyla up for preschool this morning. I've been running around all day. After Alex dropped me off back at home after we took Lyla to school, I made myself a pancake for breakfast because I was hungry. I went upstairs to lay back down for a couple hours but as soon as my head hit the pillow, my phone started ringing and J.M. Tate High School called me and asked me if I can come in for an interview next week. I was on the phone with them for half an hour, setting up everything. They asked me if I could fax my child abuse clearances over to them so after I hung up the phone with them, I got dressed and ran up to Pensacola's police department so I could get my clearances. Then I went to the library so I could use the fax machine and by that time, I was hungry so I went to Wendy's. I was missing Alex and I was excited about getting the call for the job so I just decided to go visit him. I visited him, we did what we did and I went back home. When I got home from visiting him at the hospital, it was pretty pointless to go back to sleep when I'd have to wake back up to go get Lyla. So I just took a long, hot shower to wash the sex off of me and I still had half an hour to spare after that, so I straightened my hair real quick since I washed it in the shower. Now I'm here, picking Lyla up. I had a busy day.

I really hope I get this job. I need this job so bad it's not funny. I just don't want to feel like I went to college and got a teaching certificate for no reason. The most I've ever done was student teach and that's hardly anything at all. I've never even gotten the chance to make money with my degree and it would suck so badly if I let my teaching certificate go to waste. I have been thinking about what Alex said though. I think I'm going to go back to school to get my actuary science degree. I think I'm going to take night classes at the community college down there in Murraysville. It'll only take me a year to graduate if I take classes at the community college and not to mention, it'll only cost me $16 a credit, which is not bad at ALL. I'm gonna call my mom and talk to her about it later and see what she thinks but for the most part, I'm pretty sure that's what I'm going to do. I actually miss my mommy. I haven't talked to her in a while and I find that I kind of miss her crazy self. I'm such a mommy's girl, secretly though. I just really need to get this job though. Clearly I won't be making nearly as much money teaching as I would make as an actuary but I'd be making enough to help Alex out with the bills. If I become an actuary, Alex and I wouldn't have to worry about a damn thing ever again in our lives for as long as we're together. He'd be making his $400,000 a year as a baby surgeon and I'd be making anywhere from $150,000 to $250,000 a year as an actuary. Off the top of my head, Alex would be making $33,000 a month and I'd add somewhere around $21,000 to that, which means our monthly income would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $54,000 a month, assuming Alex makes the full $400,000 and I make the full $250,000. We'd be making BANK together and Lyla would be so well taken care of. That's assuming everything goes well though. Even if something happens where Alex and I break up, I'll still be making a comfortable $21,000 a month with my own degree.

I stick my keys in the back pocket of my blue jean shorts and pull open the door to the YMCA. Now that I think about it, I probably should've dressed differently to come pick her up. I'm about to walk in here around the overbearing mothers that wear pencil skirts and blazers and draw smiley faces with jelly in their kids' peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and I'm wearing a pair of arguably too-short blue jean shorts, black converse sneakers and a t-shirt with the Guns 'N Roses logo on it. My hair isn't poofy from a perm like the mothers I saw this morning. It's sleek and straight down my back. I should've at least tried to act like I fit in with them so they won't hesitate to send their kids over to Lyla's for a playdate for the fear of them coming back with tattooed skin and pink hair. I shrug it off and walk down the hallway that leads to her preschool room. I'm not the only "mother" that arrived early to pick up their kids, I see. I'm only five or six minutes early though so I don't think it's a big deal. The other mothers are standing around outside the classroom in a circle, busily chatting away. I stand off in a corner by myself and pull out my phone so I don't seem like a loner.

"I already told Kim I'd help out with the cupcakes. I know it's a little early to be planning for the Halloween party, but the sooner the better, I think." A blonde woman with black glasses, wearing a pair of mom jeans and a gray t-shirt addresses the rest of the mothers. "My little Shania was always…" I tune out of their conversation before I can even hear the end of that sentence. Shania…I kind of like the name. I'm guessing she was named after Shania Twain though. I'm guessing the blonde woman is a fan of Shania Twain and thus bestowed the name upon her little girl. I'm just speaking from experience. I almost got the Shania Twain treatment too. Although Josephine isn't much better than Shania, I think I'll take my ugly name over being named after a crummy singer any day. I guess maybe that's the theme for women around Millerton; to name their kids after things that they like, I mean. There's one kid in Lyla's class named "Axel" and his mother said himself that he's named after Axel Rose. Now there's a Shania Twain wannabe and poor Lyla herself is named after the cheerleader off Friday Night Lights.

I cross a striped candy with a wrapped candy on the level of Candy Crush I'm playing and that's when the group of mothers actually address me. "Excuse me." One with curly black hair leans forward with a smile and speaks up. I lock my phone and stuff it in my pocket so I can give her my attention. "Amy Dillard." She extends her hand to me. "Cooper's mom…whose mother are you?" Well boy, she's forward, isn't she?"

I plaster on my fakest smile in the world and use my fake voice too. "Jo Wilson." I tuck my hair behind my ear again and extend my hand to shake hers. "Lyla's my daughter." Somehow I find that easier to say than "I'm Lyla's mother". I don't know why, I just do. Well they're pretty forward and it's very clear that I'm much younger than they are but at least they're making an effort to include me in on their conversations. I don't know what's worse though. I don't know if being excluded or included is worse.

"Is she your only child?" The blonde one that victimized her poor Shania Twain kid asks me.

"Yes ma'am." I nod my head.

"That explains why we don't know you." She smiles at me and holds her hand out too. "Karen Phillips. Shania's mother." We both shake hands. "We've all been dealing with each other for quite some time now. The rest of our sons and daughters were in preschool with each other last year and the year before. Shania's my third, Cooper is Amy's second, Axel is Margaret's second, little Jewel is Kelly's fourth, Farrah is Tracy's third and Sean and Blake…the twins, they're Saundra here's second set of twins." She introduces everyone to me but I hardly kept up. All I know is that the blonde one's Shania's mom and the black haired one is Cooper's mother. And they know each other so well because their previous kids have gone to preschool together. That's all I got out of that conversation. I can't help but wonder if the child named Farrah was named after Farrah Fawcett. I'd be willing to bet money on that. "Which one is Lyla?"

"Oh…um….brown hair, green eyes…kind of quiet." I kind of wish I could be like the woman I saw this morning. This morning when we dropped Lyla off here, this same group of women were crowded around and talking amongst each other. I saw one woman this morning though. She dropped off the cutest little boy. He had curly, kinky black hair and the most flawless chocolate brown skin. He was adorable. Anyway, his mother dropped him off, said hi to these women and went about her business. I kind of want to be like her. Why can't they say hi to me and leave me alone? It's things like this that make me feel a little uneasy about being Lyla's mother all of a sudden. Sure, I've been doing it for a while and yeah, parts of it come naturally to me…while we're at home, that is. I don't know anything about being a PTA mom or an overly involved mom that wants to help out with Halloween parties and stuff. I don't know if I should get involved with the school functions or if I should just stay out of everything. What kind of mother am I? Am I one of those chilled out moms that just sits back and lets everyone else handle things? Or am I one of these mothers that helps out with every little school function and makes sure things are organized? My mom wasn't like that growing up. She wasn't overly involved but she did send me in every Christmas party or Halloween party or my birthday with a container of cupcakes or cookies for the class. What kind of mother am I going to be? I don't know.

"Oh, you're with the stud dad, isn't that right?" A redhead with green eyes interjects. "Just when we thought we were going to finally get a dad to be part of the PTA." She laughs and so do the rest of the women.

"Alex will still participate." I assure them. Alex? The stud dad? Haha. "He's just working right now."

"What do you and your husband do?" Amy asks.

"He's not my husband, but I'm a teacher and he's a pediatrician." I rock back and forth, nervously on my feet. I can tell that this is some initiation ritual that they do to all new homeroom mothers. Well I don't want them to have any misconceptions or preconceived notions about me and the kind of person I am, so I might as well tell them the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me god. "I'm more of…like her stepmother. She's not my biological daughter but she's still my…daughter. And I'm not married to her father but we're still together. Sorry, I know it's kind of complicated."

"Nothing complicated about that." The blonde one shrugs her shoulders as if she's really not judging and that makes me relax a little better. They're all in their mid-30s or early 40s so I thought for sure they'd have more traditionalist views on how things should be. Like marriage and mothers and fathers and things like that. It's good to know that A, they're not traditionalist freaks that'll exclude my child from functions just because her parents aren't like them and B, they're not like the rest of the women in Millerton that dislike me because I'm dating Alex. It doesn't seem like they know much about Alex. It seems like they're some of the few people around town that doesn't know about Alex and his cancery wife that died. I like that. They can form their own opinions of me and him and Lyla. "If you don't mind my asking dear, how old are you and your boyfriend?"

"I'm 29 and he's 30." I tell her, completely unashamed.

"You're much younger than all of us." The redhead laughs again. "But you're welcome to be a part of us. We were just discussing the upcoming Halloween party Miss Kim throws every year for the 4 year old class. The kids dress up in their costumes and have a nice little party and the parents are partially responsible for bringing snacks. We bring cupcakes, juice boxes, dips, salads…anything you can think of! The kids always have a bunch of fun."

"Um…" I tuck my hair behind my ears yet again but mostly because I'm nervous since she basically just put me on the spot by inviting me to be part of their little clique or whatever. Why can't I be like that mom that dropped off her adorable son this morning? "Sure, I'll bring something. I'm not sure what, but I'll definitely bring something." I drape my arm across my body and hold my other arm with my elbow. I bite my lip. "Um…does someone already make…dirt?" I ask. They all look at me like they're confused. "You know…dirt? Oreos, chocolate pudding and whipped cream? You put gummy worms on top and it's supposed to look like dirt?" They all shake their heads slowly. "Okay, I'll make dirt then. And sand too….sand's the same thing, just with vanilla pudding and vanilla Oreos." I explain. "You put Sweedish Fish on top of that."

"That sounds heavenly, Jo." The one named Amy nods her head at me, seemingly shocked. I'm shocked myself. It's Lyla's first day of preschool and I've already found myself up shit's creek with overbearing PTA moms. I guess I don't mind though. Lyla's gonna be here for an entire school year; I might as well get involved with the little functions they have here. After all…I kind of am her mother now, aren't I? And I can't see Alex volunteering to make things for her parties. He'll come to the party and he'll chip in to buy like plates or something but he wouldn't make anything. This is why Lyla needs a mother. I should just think of my tactics here canoodling with the PTA moms as getting Lyla ahead because essentially, that's what I'm doing. If school in this day and age is anything like it was back when I was in school, the kids whose parents were active participants in the PTA were always the popular kids. It's just how it was.

Coming into this place today, I was sure that I was going to be the ostracized mom. I'm wearing shorts and a band t-shirt for crying out loud. But what do you know? I'm becoming an active member of the PTA. Who would've thought? Not me. Finally, the door to the classroom opens up and I assume that means that the kids are finally dismissed and we're allowed in, because the other mothers start filing into the room. I just hop in line and follow their lead. The room looks the exact same as it did this morning. It doesn't look like any toys or books were taken out of place. Over towards the back exit, about fifteen kids are lined up with their backpacks and lunchboxes in tow and I'm guessing they're about to get on the bus. The kids that don't ride the bus are sitting in the plastic blue chairs at the circle table. Lyla's sitting in her seat with her backpack on her back and her lunchbox in her hand and she's talking to a little girl with strawberry blonde hair and the cutest little tortoiseshell glasses on her face. The two of them are talking away and that makes me smile. She made a friend.

The classroom aid named Miss Diane takes the bus children out the door and all that's left are the seven kids that don't ride the bus. Miss Kim walks over to greet us and she has a really happy look on her face. "Today was a great first day. We did some ice breaker activities so they'd get to know each other, we told everyone about ourselves and we decorated our Popsicle sticks so we can begin using the behavior chart tomorrow." She looks specifically at me. "Can I have a word with you, Mrs. Karev?" I nod my head and follow her off to the side. Someday I'll get around to telling her that I'm not exactly Mrs. Karev. While the other mothers get their children ready to go home for the day, the teacher pulls me off to the side. "Pretty much every child in here, I've gotten to know over the course of two years because they were in our 3 year old preschool class here as well. So I pretty much already know about their families and about who they are as children but little Lyla…she's a new child for me." I nod my head and just listen. "Now, we did have a situation with her this morning where she cried for half an hour after you and your husband left…she didn't eat the cereal with milk that we provided for breakfast this morning because she was so upset." Poor baby. My heart sinks for her. "However, when we started the ice breaker activities, she actively participated, we got her to laugh and open up…she's very shy, we've noticed. But she's very well-behaved. We had no issues with her at all today except for the little tantrum she threw earlier. She wasn't really interested in speaking much today so my aid and I took it upon ourselves to stimulate conversation with her directly and like I said, she did open up a bit. She ate every bite of her lunch today and it seems that she's getting along especially well with another child in the class named Kinsey…the one she was talking to."

"But she was good? She didn't need to be sent to timeout or reprimanded for anything? And she used the bathroom alright?" I glance behind her back, only to find that Lyla's sitting alone at the table now. I guess somewhere along the lines, Kinsey's mother came in and picked her up and now we're the only two still in here. Her curls held up all day, her outfit is still intact and she's not crying. I'd say it was successful as far as I can see.

"She was an angel all day today. She used the restroom on the restroom break just like every other child and she was perfect. I'm looking forward to working with her." She turns around and faces her. "…She did have a little trouble with a child named Destiny today but that resolved itself. There was an issue with the little girl pulling Lyla's hair during circle time but it was resolved and there were no other incidents at all." That just pissed me off. I'm not afraid to smack somebody's child. Like…Lyla doesn't do anything to anybody. I'm not saying that she's a perfect goody two-shoes but I am saying that she's way too mild-mannered to mess with anybody so I hardly think she did anything to deserve to have her hair pulled. I'll smack somebody's kid for messing with mine. She doesn't do anything to anybody and I didn't spend ten minutes in the bathroom today for her hair to be pulled. If I'm told tomorrow that that little Destiny bitch is picking on her, I'm slapping somebody's kid and then I'm slapping the kid's mother for not teaching her kid some damn respect. I'm not going to let my kid get bullied. I was bullied for being the girl that lived in a shelter when I was younger and all it made me want to do is cry and shove heads through doors. I'm not about to let that happen to Lyla. "I'm looking forward to seeing Lyla tomorrow."

"We'll be here." I quickly extinguish my annoyance for the child that pulled her hair and pop a smile on my face. "Come on, Lala." I call her name and she turns around and springs up out of her seat. She runs over to me as if she was waiting for me to finish talking and she jumps right up on me. I immediately smile and pick her up. "Hi boo boo." I kiss her on her cheek and carry her out the door. "So how was today? Did you have fun?"

"Uh huh!" She nods her head. "I drawed daddy a picture. It in my bookybag. I show it to you when we get home, kay? I missed daddy so so much today and Miss Diane say….her say if I miss him, I can draw him pictures and so I did. I colored him something nice, mama." She's just babbling on and on out of excitement. "And I has a fwend…her name Kinsey. And we eated lunch together and we maked her daddy a picture too."

"Really? Sounds like you had an awesome day. Did you?" I open up the door that leads out into the parking lot.

"Uh huh." She nods again. "…Mommy, I go back to school tomorrow too?"

"Yep. See, I told you." I put her down on the ground and hold her hand as we walk through the parking lot to get to my car. "I told you it'd be fun."

* * *

 **A/N:** So if I had to guess, I'd say that this story's going to be around 70-75 chapters. It'll be no less than 70 but no more than 75. I do have some loose ends to tie up that'll take a few chapters to do so, so just know that the story is nowhere near over. I will say that it might come across as nothing but fluff from here on out and I'm sorry if you don't like that. I do have a few more twists and turns up my sleeve, because I need to strengthen Alex and Jo's relationship and I need to give Jo a happier ending than what she's being given right now. It might be fluffy and a little bit boring from here on out since I got my main plot device out of the way with the whole CPS thing.

With that being said, my mind's been spinning off in a million different directions and ideas have just been coming to me like wildfire. I have a really neat little idea I'd like to do for my next story and it kind of incorporates bits and pieces of the remaining two prompts I had you guys vote on towards the end of In The End. It's a really nifty idea and I'm so eager to write it because I know it can become a good story and I've honestly never seen it done in the Jolex fandom before. I'm excited for you guys to see it.

There's a downside to all of this, though. I go off to college on the 27th of this month and as it stands right now, my class schedule is pretty hectic and the only off day I have is on Tuesdays during the week. I anticipate that college is going to be a big adjustment for me and I won't have the freedom to just sit up until 5:00 in the morning writing juicy updates anymore. :( So until I'm able to adjust to college and see when I'm able to squeeze writing in, I will be taking a hiatus after this story. I plan on writing oneshots on my tumblr throughout the break but I will be taking a hiatus from writing multichapters within the next month. I don't want to, but I have to :(

Until then though, I hope you guys enjoy Your Life and Mine.


	61. Hurricane

I sling my hands down in my pockets and walk down the hallway with my shoulders slouched. It's not that I don't want to be here, it's just that Jo usually takes care of all of this and I'm just beginning. I don't know anything about how this works. She's been in preschool for an entire week and a half and I haven't had to pick her up yet because up until today, Jo and I had a real nice routine going. Since Lyla's started preschool, Arizona's been gracious enough to stick me on 9:00 to 3:30 shifts during the week and I only work 3:00-11:00 on the weekends. So Jo's been waking me up every morning when she wakes Lyla up and we do our little thing. Jo cooks breakfast because Lyla told her that breakfast at school is nasty. So Jo cooks breakfast for me and for Lyla, me and Lyla eat while Jo packs her lunch and gets her bookbag ready. The three of us get dressed, we take Lyla to preschool, I drop Jo back off at work and we go on about our days until Jo picks Lyla up at 3:00 and I get home from work around 4:00. That's our own little thing, that's the way it's been for the last week and three days and we're all settled in to a decent routine. But today, I had to get off work at 2:30 so that someone would be here to pick Lyla up because Jo's up in Pensacola at her job interview. She thought she would be out of her interview by the time it was time to go get her but she called me at 1:00 and told me that it was going to be a little later. So I had to pull some strings and get off an hour early because I'm not all that comfortable with letting Lyla ride the bus to my dad's shop and that's exactly what would have to happen if I didn't get off early.

As I approach the end of the hallway, I hear the busy chatter of kids talking and laughing. How hard can picking her up be? All I do is go in here, tell her to come on and walk her out the door. Nobody better say anything to me and nobody better try to talk to me. I'm not the overly involved kind of dad and I'm not here to make friends with the preppy soccer parents. They already somehow talked Jo into being a homeroom mother for the little Halloween party coming up and I believe that if they got Jo to agree to do something like that, they must be pretty persuasive because I can't see Jo baking cupcakes and organizing parties but she's going to. They must be pretty damn persuasive because Jo doesn't strike me as that kind of parent at all. When I came home from work last week and Jo told me that she was appointed to help with their Halloween party, I was surprised because like I said, Jo doesn't strike me as the type to do something like that but after the shock wore off, I was actually quite pleased. Honestly? I wish Jo wouldn't get a job. I wish she'd stay home because I really like the routine we came up with. It's just kind of wholesome to come home every day to a good woman and my daughter. But, I know how much getting a job means to Jo and I would never stand in the way or hinder her from doing exactly what she wants. I want her to go back to school and I want her to become an actuary and I DON'T want to be like her first husband that forced her to belittle herself. I'm not like him and I never will be. Jo's happiness comes first to me in our relationship and that's how it's supposed to be.

I just wish she wouldn't get a teaching job. We can make it work on my income alone until she finishes college and I think she knows that. She just doesn't want me to take care of her and I admire and respect that. I admire the fact that she doesn't want to sit on her ass and let her boyfriend take care of her even though he could. It's important to her to get a job and if it's important to Jo, it's important to me as well. I just really like the good, wholesome feeling I get when I walk through the door every day and see Lyla sitting at the table doing her "homework" and Jo cooking dinner for us. It makes me feel good and I don't think I'm ready to give that up. I'm not ready to settle in to a different routine but for Jo, it's a sacrifice I have to make. I'm not secretly hoping that she _doesn't_ get the job or anything like that; I'm not spiteful and I don't want to see Jo sad. I really do want her to get the job and I'm praying that she does. But if she didn't, I'd be alright. I'd be sad for her because she really wants this job, but I'd be alright. I really think Jo and I are starting to understand each other better. We're learning to understand each other, communicate better and I finally think we're giving and taking at equal rates.

For a while there, our relationship was very take on my part and very give on Jo's. Lately, we've been giving and taking at the same rate. Like for example, I don't want Jo to get a job and she knows that. She knows I don't want her to work and worry about anything while she's in school and she knows that. I told her the other day that I would like for her to stay at home and focus on school but she told me that she really wanted to work and that's something we worked through. We didn't argue about it, it wasn't something we screamed at each other about and we were over it within a matter of seconds. I had an opinion about something and I expressed it to her. She listened but she didn't take my opinion and that's all it was. I was actually quite surprised when that discussion didn't turn into an argument like I thought it would but actually, I noticed some growth in our relationship after that. I think we learned that not everything has to be an argument. For me, I certainly learned how to give more and for Jo, I think she learned that screaming isn't the only way to get her point across to me. At this point, I think all Jo and I are interested in is growing. We've been together for two months, I've known her for five and I think we're just trying to grow. It wasn't much, but I think that conversation was a big stepping stone in allowing our relationship to grow.

I finally make it to the end of the hallway and turn, walking right into the open door. I'm not the only parent that's standing around in the room and waiting to take my kid home but I am the only father that came and that doesn't surprise me. Picking the kid up from school is such a mom thing to do. Lyla's sitting in the same seat she goes to every morning when we drop her off at school. She's sitting beside a little girl with strawberry blonde pigtails and little round glasses on her face and the two of them are playing some kind of patty-cake game. I'm not sure what the little girl's name is, but she's wearing a pair of blue jeans with a long-sleeved pink t-shirt and a pair of red sneakers. Her pigtails are tied back with one blue holder and one yellow one and she's wearing a silver necklace with a big red heart charm in the middle of it that's very clearly fake. On her finger, she has a purple plastic ring and her shoelaces are multicolored. That's a very…eccentric kid, if I do say so myself. I'm guessing maybe her parents are more liberal with letting her dress herself because I can't imagine any adult that would dress their four year old so mismatched. If we were to let Lyla dress herself in the mornings, I'm guessing her outfit would look very similar to the kid she's getting along with's outfit. Letting her dress herself isn't a bad idea but Jo really enjoys dressing her up in the morning and that's their thing. That's what they do and I have to admit that Jo always has her looking like she stepped out of a modeling magazine.

Next to the kid she's talking to, Lyla looks like a little saint. Jo dressed her in a long-sleeved white shirt with a diamond on the front and a light pink skirt with ruffles in the bottom that make it look similar to a tutu. Underneath her skirt, she's wearing a pair of hot pink leggings and a pair of sparkly black boots since it's supposed to rain today. Her hair is tied back in two very neat, low pigtails and I think this outfit is my favorite one that Jo's ever dressed her in. She looks pretty cute. "Alright parents, while I have you all here, I'd like to take the opportunity to discuss upcoming events." Lyla's teacher stands in front of the classroom and starts talking. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. See, Jo's so much better at this than I am. She's good at listening to whatever the teacher has to say and gathering whatever handouts the teacher gives to take home. And when I get home from work, she briefs me on everything that went on and she tells me if there's anything I need to sign or be aware of. She usually takes care of all of this hands-on stuff and now I have to sit here and pretend to listen to whatever this woman has to say to me. I stand near the back of the classroom and act like I'm listening.

"Next Friday, we will be taking our very first field trip. I sent flyers home about it on Tuesday but I'd like to take the opportunity to speak to you all about it personally. We'll be venturing about an hour away, up a little past Pensacola to the Guilder Arena to see Disney On Ice. I purchased 32 tickets beforehand and the cost for your children to go is free. We are looking for chaperones so if you are interested, you are more than welcome to contact me or Miss Diane. With 22 children and two teachers, we'll only have an additional eight tickets so in a sense, we are looking for eight chaperones. If you are one of the eight chaperones, the cost of you attending the trip will be free as well. The cost of attending the trip is free, but we are asking for each parent to provide their child with a minimum of $10. That will cover the cost of lunch while there. If you do not provide your child with $10, we ask you to provide a packed lunch or some other source of food for your child. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact myself or Miss Diane and if you are interested in becoming one of the eight chaperones, please contact us. Again, we are only looking for eight chaperones…but if you wish to attend the trip with your child after the eight slots have filled up, you are more than welcome to purchase your own ticket and attend the trip. The cost of an adult ticket is $32." Yeah, I'm not interested. Can I just take my daughter and go home? "Thank you for your time and attention. Everybody stay dry and we'll see you and your children tomorrow!" She finally stops talking and when she does, the group of women that were listening so attentively disperses and everyone moves to get to their own child.

"Lyla…come on." I motion with my hand for her to come over to me and she holds her tiny little finger up to tell me to wait a minute. I suck my teeth as she turns back around to her friend and starts yapping away again. Since she's taking her sweet time about getting over here so we can leave, I just walk over to her cubby and her coat rack so I'll have her things when she decides she wants to go home. I pick up her backpack, her lunch box and the jacket Jo made her wear this morning. I have to admit that sometimes it's still a little overwhelming to hear Lyla call Jo "mommy" and "mama" so freely but I honestly think I'd get a little offended if she didn't. I don't think I would like it very much if she was still calling Jo "Jojo" because let's face it, Jo is way more than just "Jojo" to that little girl. I sometimes find it surreal that Lyla actually has a mother figure in her life to do everything that I can't and am not willing to do. I really don't know where I would be without Jo here to deal with this whole preschool thing. I'd have to dress her up every day, I'd have to pack her lunch…there are just some things that I'm not cut out to do as a father and those things, Jo takes care of. She's a really good mother and I guess maybe that's why I really brush off the fact that Lyla calls her "mommy". It'd be a totally different story if she was calling her that while Jo didn't deserve the title but if there's anybody that deserves the title of "mom", it's Jo. She does everything with Lyla. I couldn't have handpicked a better substitute mother for her. "Lyla, now." She puts that finger up at me again and she has one more time to delay me before I snatch her up by her pigtails and drag her out of here. When she first started preschool, we used to have to drag her out of the bed every morning and shove her in the car and force her to come. These days, she gladly gets up and we have to drag her outta here every day.

I do like the fact that she has friends though, so I just look around and wait for her to finish her conversation. Maybe I'll get lucky and the little girl she's talking to's mother will tell her that it's time to go before I have to drag my daughter out of here first. I fish my phone out of my pocket and check to see if maybe Jo texted or called me to tell me that her interview is over. I'm not blind, nor am I deaf but sometimes, I sure wish I was both. I wish I didn't know that the women standing around talking are actually talking about me…and I wish I didn't see the fact that they're pointing at me. They're trying to be discreet about their pointing but it's a little bit obvious that they are. I'd point at me too if I were them though. I'm literally the only man in this room and the only reason why I'm still here is because my brat of a daughter won't stop being a chatterbox. I just sigh and look down at my phone. "Are you considering being a chaperone, Mr. Karev?" Finally, instead of pointing, staring and whispering, one of the women actually approaches me. She has long, curly black hair and chocolate brown eyes. She's wearing bright red lipstick, eyeliner and a sophisticated sundress. "I really think you should consider it."

"Alex." I turn completely around and extend my hand to formally introduce myself to her. I kind of don't want to be nice and introduce myself to her but I won't be rude. We shake hands firmly. "Alex Karev." I take my hand away and stick it back in my pocket. "I don't think I'm going to be able to chaperone. I work on Fridays and it's not always easy for me to take off." I tell a bold lie to this woman's face. I can easily take off next Friday to attend the field trip and Arizona would have absolutely no problem with it. I just don't want to take off. I don't want to take off and go to the stupid field trip so I can watch ice skaters dance around in costumes. I'm not interested. "My schedule's pretty loaded during the week."

"You work up at the children's hospital, yeah?" The woman isn't even looking at my face. She's looking at my chest and from my chest, her eyes wander down to my junk and her eyes stay there. I'm so glad Jo's not around to see this. My girl would FLIP if she saw this. Jo would kill this woman if she were here right now. "How long have you been working up there?" Her eyes finally find mine again. I wouldn't mind this woman staring at me so hard if she was actually attractive. She looks to be about 40 years old. She has wrinkles in her cheeks and on her forehead, her hair is wispy and too thin, her eyebrows look painted on…she's just not my type. Maybe I'm a little bit too blinded by Jo but I'm literally not attracted to anyone but my girl. I don't find anyone to be attractive and I guess that's what happens when I have a woman that looks like Jo. Jo's fucking beautiful. She's unbelievable. How could I even think about cheating on her? Let alone with this woman? Her eyes are back below my waist again. Maybe I should tell her that I have a crazy ass girlfriend and she'd better leave me alone because my crazy ass girlfriend doesn't play. "You're a surgeon, right?"

"Yeah…pediatric surgery." I glance at Lyla to see if she's ready to leave or not. I'm gonna get out of here before anything happens between me and this woman. Of course I'm going to tell Jo about what already happened because we don't keep secrets from each other. I'm going to tell her that this woman was looking hard at me but I'd rather just tell her about a look than have to tell her about a touch or a grind or a smirk. A look is better than any of that. "I've been working up there for a few years." I adjust my grip around Lyla's things.

"So I see you're picking Lyla up today…where's your girlfriend?" I notice that she tilted her head to the side and started batting her eyelashes like girls always do when they flirt with me. I guess in some ways, I've been pretty lucky because up until now, I've actually gone a while without having another woman hit on me. I've noticed that ever since I've been seen around town with Jo, the stares have slowed up a bunch and women don't faint and cream their panties when I walk around as much as they used to back when I was single. They've been respectful to Jo in a sense by not flirting with me. I'm not saying that they haven't stared at me because obviously, I still get stares when I walk into the drugstore and whatnot but women don't flirt with me like they used to and I'm glad for that. Not to sound cocky or conceited, but me and Jo are a pretty hot couple, if I do say so myself. I get hit on and stared at by a bunch of females and if I had a nickel for every time Jo attracts attention from guys, I'd be rich. It might sound a little strange, but I think that's another thing that makes me and Jo's relationship work so well. The fact that she knows what it's like to get unwanted attention from the opposite sex makes her somewhat understanding when we go down to the supermarket to pick up groceries and she sees women staring at me. She gets that it's not my fault and she doesn't flip on me. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I do have to hear about it. Sometimes I do have to listen to her snap about how the cashier was smiling at me a little too much but she doesn't get too mad because she knows that I could flip it around and snap about the men that stare at her ass when she walks by. I will admit that Jo doesn't attract nearly as much attention from guys as I do from girls but the attention that she attracts from men is far more dangerous than the attention I attract from women. We have a pretty good understanding when it comes to people staring and things like that though.

"Jo's busy today so yep…it's daddy's day to pick her up." Somehow I still manage to keep this somewhat professional. This woman is clearly trying to pry to see if there's any chance of Jo showing up but I find a way to deflect away from that. "She'll be here tomorrow though." Finally, the little redhead that Lyla's been talking to gets up out of her seat, which causes Lyla to get up too. "You ready to go?" I ask her as she walks over to me. She nods her head and holds her arms up. I bend down and pick her up. "Alright, let's go." I peck her on her cheek and turn back to my secret admirer. "It was nice meeting you…" I don't think I caught her name so I can't refer to her by it.

"Nice meeting you too, Alex. If you need anything…anything at all…" She sifts through her purse and plucks out a black pen. "If there's anything I can help you with…" Without warning or hesitation, she just starts jotting numbers down on the backside of my hand. "Don't hesitate to call me." She writes her name with a heart next to it, which kind of creeps me out but I'm still not going to be rude. If Lyla wasn't in my arms, I might've considered telling her to back the hell off but my kid's in my arms and I don't really like showing my douchebag side around her. I like for her to think her daddy is a good guy. "…And I stay up late." She winks at me and turns back around to be with her friends again. My eyes widen by about ten different sizes and I can't help but mouth the word "wow" to myself. She's…she's bold. I shake my head at what just happened and turn to walk away. As I'm leaving out of the room, I hear her say to her friends, "So what? He's not married!" I shake my head again and shudder. That was pretty weird.

"How was your day, Ly?" I completely brush off the awkward encounter that I was just involved in and focus on Lyla because that's what I should be focused on. Yeah, I may not be married but Jo's just as good as a wife to me and it doesn't matter if she's my wife or not, she'll still beat the shit out of that poor woman. That's one thing I have learned about Jo. She doesn't play around when it comes to the people she loves. I've seen that on more than one occasion. Last week when I came home from work and asked Lyla how her day at preschool was, Jo told me that the teacher told her that there was an incident with another child pulling her hair. And Jo was more pissed about it than Lyla was. She was talking about smacking somebody's child and smacking the mother too…she was pissed off. And the day after that, she was on the phone with her mom and she started cussing her mom's boyfriend out over the phone because he simply asked Terri who she was talking to. But Jo felt like he was being disrespectful towards her mother and she went OFF on that man. I've never heard her say so many cuss words in one breath. She called the man all kinds of low-down, broke, lazy motherfuckers…it was horrible the way she talked to that man over the PHONE too. I've never had the opportunity to see Jo fight but something tells me that she could take a grown man if she needed to. I wouldn't mess with her and I'm more than twice her size. I have a crazy girlfriend.

Since she's wiggling, I lean down and put her down on the ground as soon as we get out into the parking lot. "It was fun. I learned the letter 'H' today, daddy. And I learned how to spell…um…Hat. And hut, and hop." She's only been in school for a short amount of time and I've already noticed growth in her. She doesn't really talk much like a baby anymore. She's starting to get her tenses right; like for example, she'll say 'I got' instead of 'I getted'. She's learning lots of things and I'm honestly surprised that I can already see such growth in her when she's only been in school for two weeks. Apparently, she's really good in school too. They have a behavior chart with three different colors. There's red, yellow and green. If her Popsicle stick is on green, it means she was good. If it's on yellow, it means she had a little bit of an issue but nothing major. If the stick is on red, it means she was absolutely horrendous. Her stick's never been off green, as far as I know. "Daddy, I goin'…" She retracts to correct herself. I've noticed that she'll correct her speech if she catches herself messing up too. She's learning so much. "I'm goin' on a field trip in a bunch of days. Will you…be a…come along daddy?"

"Daddy has to work on that day, Ly. You're still gonna go and have fun though. But daddy can't come with you." I open the car door for her and help her up into her booster seat. As she situates herself in her seat, I look up at the sky. It definitely looks like it's going to rain. There's a hurricane warning for Murraysville, Millerton, Pensacola and a town called Dunningsville, which basically means that it's going to rain it's ass off tonight. We have hurricane warnings around here all the time and they never amount to anything. There was a hurricane warning last year and the most that happened was the power got knocked out for six hours. That's all hurricane warnings ever do is knock out the power. "I'll take you to Subway so you can get something for lunch when you have to go to your field trip though, alright? How's that sound?"

"What about mommy? Maybe her—she…maybe she could come?" She starts strapping herself into her seat but I still stick around with the door open to make sure she does it right. "Kinsey's mommy is gonna…she's gonna shapper-moan. I wish mommy could shapper-moan too."

I smirk at the way she can't pronounce "chaperone" and nod my head. "I'll ask mommy if she wants to go."

 **X X X**

"What sounds good, Ly?" I rummage through the freezer and sigh. There's so much to eat in our fridge but there's nothing to eat at the same time. Jo always insists that she's not a good cook but I'm willing to bet money that her dinner would beat the hell out of anything I could even attempt to make. "Chicken patties? Fish sticks?" Neither one of those things sound too appetizing but those are the only two things in the freezer that I can just pop in the oven. I can't cook nothing serious like Jo can. I guarantee if Jo was home all day like she usually is, Lyla and I would be dining on something spectacular. Something like baked chicken, gravy and mashed potatoes. Jo swears on her life that she can't cook but everything she's ever made us to eat for dinner has been pretty tasty. "You want some fried hotdogs and baked beans?" I eye a package of hotdogs. I've been trying to wait Jo out. I've been trying to stall Lyla with chips until Jo gets home to make us something for dinner but it's almost 5:00 and she's still not home and Lyla's hungry. "What do you want to eat?"

"No chicken daddy. I am sick and tired to DEATH of chicken." She holds her hand out to me and talks with the head roll and the attitude. I'm not liking this Kinsey character that she's been hanging out with. Ever since Ly befriended that little girl, she's been giving me the attitude and the eye rolls. She's not gonna be satisfied until I kick her little butt. She climbs up on the chair at the kitchen table and continues tracing her letter H's for homework. Boy, if preschool gave her a bad attitude, I can only imagine what Kindergarten's gonna do for her. I take the package of hotdogs out of the freezer and start running hot water over them to defrost them. "Where's mommy?"

"She's coming." I grab a frying pan out of the cabinet and pour a tad bit of vegetable oil in it so I can fry the hotdogs in it. The last time I talked to Jo, she said she was on her way home. I talked to her an hour ago and she said that she was on her way. Pensacola's only half an hour away so by any logic, she should've been in this house by now but I'm not going to worry until 5:00. I've decided that. She called me at 4:00 and told me that she was on her way home and when 4:30 rolled around and she wasn't in the house, I did get a little worried but I told myself that I wasn't going to freak out and get scared until 5:00. It's almost 5:00. "After dinner, I want you to go upstairs and brush your teeth so I can give you a bath. You're not staying up until 10:00 again tonight because mommy's not going to fight with you the way she did this morning to get you up. You're going to bed at 9:00 tonight."

"You kill me, daddy." She gives me the attitude again and rolls her eyes.

"I kill you?" I tear open the package of hotdogs. "It's a school night, Lyla Isabella. You're going to bed at 9:00. Keep giving me attitude and the smart mouth, I'm gonna make you go to bed at 8:00. Now how's that for killing you?" I lose my cool for a moment there but I get it back. "Damn smart mouth. Four years old and you're already talking to me like you're fourteen." I mumble under my breath and start laying hotdogs in the pan. I put three in there for me, one in there for Lyla and two for Jo. For a while now, I've been lenient and very patient with her because I still feel bad for the fact that she was taken away from me for a while there but goddamn it, her mouth. She's only four and she has a mouth like that already? I'm not putting up with it. See, it's times like this where I wish I had son because if my son was ever as mouthy as she's being right now, I'd punch him in his chest. Not literally but…at least the option to hit a little boy is more open. I wouldn't hit Lyla because she's a girl but if she were a boy, I'd light her little ass up for talking to me like that. "What else do you want? Do you want corn or something with your hotdog and beans?" She ignores me. "LYLA!"

"I said yes!" She yells back.

"…You're going to bed early." I open up the cupboard so I can grab the can of baked beans. "I don't know what you see when you're around your little friends at preschool but I'm not like your friends' parents, Lyla." I walk over to where she's sitting. "You better lose your attitude. You're four years old, do you understand that? Stop being a brat." She pokes her lip out and puts her head down. "You gonna stop being a brat?" She nods her head. "That's what I thought." I pick her up by her arms and hold her up. "Tell me you're sorry." She just keeps her lip poked out. "Tell me you're sorry." I toss her up in the air and catch her, which makes her giggle. "Say you're sorry."

"Sorry daddy." She puts her hands on my cheeks. "I gotta do my homework." I kiss her on her cheek and put her back down in the chair she was sitting in. One thing that I like about this preschool thing so far is that she's been taking her homework very seriously. The most she ever has to do is trace a few letters and numbers but she takes her homework so seriously. She treats it like it's a serious job. Two people in this world that I can never stay mad at are Lyla and Jo. I can't stay mad at Lyla because when she pisses me off, she always turns around and does something to remind me why I love her so much. I stroke my fingers through her hair and leave her alone to do her homework. I glance at the clock. It's 5:03 and still no Jo. I'm starting to panic but I'm really trying to keep it under control. To keep myself occupied, I start cracking open the can of baked beans. I don't know where in this world Jo could be but if I let my imagination run wild, I'll have a mental breakdown so I'm just not going to think about it at all. I dump the beans into a pot and turn the burner on when finally, the front door opens. I immediately turn around to make sure that it's her because it could be either her or my dad since they both have keys.

It's Jo. She steps inside the house and closes the door behind herself. I have to actively stop my jaw from dropping when I see her all done up in her interview clothes. She's wearing a tight pair of black business suit pants, black high heels. She has the matching black jacket on but it's only buttoned once in the middle of her stomach so the hot pink camisole she has on underneath of it is very off-setting. When she turns around, I get a good frontal view of her and I'm automatically annoyed. She looks gorgeous but that's the issue. Her hair is all pulled back in a sophisticated looking bun, she has on a pair of black-framed glasses and her lips have soft pink lipstick on them. She's wearing a silver necklace around her neck and the heart charm is being swallowed up by the crease in her boobs. Why is she dressed like that? "Sorry…I got caught in the storm." She unbuttons her jacket and takes it off and shows that the pink undershirt she has on isn't even a tank top like I thought it was; it's strapless. Is she serious? "It's coming down up there in Pensacola. The storm's coming our way." She walks over to Lyla first. "Hey boo boo." She pecks her on the cheek and walks over to me next. "Baby." She raises up on her tiptoes and leans in for a kiss but I put my hand over her mouth. "Alex, what? I told you I was caught in the storm."

"What the hell is this?" I pull her shirt up. She has a beauty mark the size of a pencil eraser on her left tit…only I should know about that beauty mark but whoever she was around wearing this shirt today knows about the beauty mark now. "I didn't…If I knew, I wouldn't have let you go out the house looking like this." I put my finger on my beauty mark. "What'd I tell you about this?" I grab her shoulder and turn her around to look at her pants, which are entirely too tight. "I can see two millimeters of a buttcheek…what the hell, Jo? Where the hell'd you think you were going with this little toddler ass shirt on?" I pull on her shirt again.

"Babe, it's not even that bad, I had a jacket on the whole time." She starts giggling but I'm not laughing. What the hell did she think she was doing with these skimpy ass clothes on? She looks beautiful but goddamn. "I knew you'd have something to say about the shirt but come on…the pants really aren't that bad. They're just pants."

"They're tight pants!" I slip my hand under the waistband of her pants and pull on them. They're skin-tight too. "They're practically leggings, Jo! And I can see a little half centimeter of your asscheek! Look at your back dimples hanging all out. Put some damn clothes on next time! You went to an interview…not a nightclub." She's laughing so hard at me right now. I narrow my eyes at her and eventually, I smirk too. I lean in and give her a kiss. "How'd your interview go?"

"It went well." She wraps her arms around my neck and stands up on her tiptoes again. "I have a second interview one week from today. The guy told me that if I get the job, I'd be hired as a substitute within the district first but that's only because the Stats teacher that I'm going to replace has to finish out the first nine weeks so she doesn't breach her contract." She gives me another kiss. "The guy really liked me. He said I was one of the most qualified applicants he interviewed, so…" Another kiss. "I think it went really well."

"Of course he liked you…you're showing off your ass and your boobs. I'd like you too." I put my hands around her waist and kiss her on her cheek. "No but seriously Jo…don't let me catch you in that shirt ever again. Jacket or not." She rolls her eyes at me and just nods her head. "You look good though."

"Thanks." She takes her arms from around my neck and stands normally again. "So…hotdogs?" She only takes her hands away from my neck just so she can wrap them around my waist.

"You were taking too long to get home." I rest my cheek against the top of her head. I actually kind of missed her. I haven't seen her since this morning and I missed her. Her interview wasn't until 12:00 today so I was already gone for work by the time she had to leave for her interview. Clearly I didn't see her because if I had, I would've made her change her shirt. The pink and the black looks really nice on her but she doesn't need to show as much cleavage as she is. I would've made her at least change the shirt. I would've dealt with the tight pants but the shirt is something I wish I could've prevented. I don't usually police what Jo wants to wear because it's her body and she can do what she wants to do with it but I don't hesitate to tell her how I feel when she tries to walk out the house in the little booty shorts. I just feel like guys stare at her enough and I have to deal with it but I don't want her to give them something to stare at. That's like me walking around town shirtless and in a speedo. Girls already look but if I give them a reason to, it draws more attention. I don't know. I just don't like the thought of people looking at my girl.

"Alex?" She calls my name but doesn't bother picking her head up off my chest. Her head is positioned downward though, as if she's looking at the ground while her head is on my chest. I mumble a "hmm?" and wait to see what she wants. "…Who the hell is Bethany?" I wrinkle my brow. Bethany? Doesn't ring a bell. I keep silent while I try to think about a Bethany. I don't know a Bethany. She lets me go and sits up straight. "Lyla. Baby, go in the living room and watch TV. You need to take a break from your homework." Oh shit. She sent Lyla away…what did I do? I really don't know a Bethany! Lyla hops down off her chair and gladly goes into the living room. As soon as she's gone, Jo steps back, folds her arms and starts impatiently tapping her foot. "Who the _fuck_ is Bethany?" She talks to me calmly through clenched teeth. I know I probably look stupid and guilty but that's only because I seriously don't know anyone named Bethany. I slowly shake my head. "You're such a freaking idiot, Alex. If you're gonna tell a boldfaced ass lie to me…." She grabs my hand. "At least wash the damn evidence off your hand, you dickhead."

I look down at my hand and see that the digits are still there with the heart next to her name and everything. I grin at how funny the story is behind it. That girl literally meant so little to me that I forgot all about her. I forgot about her, I didn't even think to tell Jo about her. She's literally a nobody. "…Jo, that's nothing." I take my hand away from her. "Some girl at Lyla's school. She _was_ hitting on me. Winking at me, lookin' at my junk…the whole nine. But I shot her down and I left. She was all 'call me, I stay up late' and I just took Lyla and left." I grin at her. "It was actually pretty funny when you think about it."

"I'm not laughing, I must've missed the funny part." She slathers the back of my hand with her spit and starts scrubbing. "I'll spit on her next time I see her." She scrubs until all the ink is gone. "They've seen me come in there and pick her up. They all know that you're taken. That's disrespectful as hell." She licks my hand again and keeps rubbing. "Bitch…don't give my man your number. How ballsy can you be? Ew." She rolls her eyes. "Why didn't you tell her to get her grubby paws off you?"

"Because Lyla was on my hip and I didn't want to be rude in front of her." I explain.

"Well let me have a talk with her the next time I pick Lyla up." She mumbles. "I'll burn that bitch's house down." See, I told you Jo's crazy. Maybe that's the reason why I love her though. This girl…she's my heart. She's got me so whipped it's not even funny. And yeah, okay I admit…part of the reason she's got me whipped is because the sex is good. I'm…pussy-whipped or whatever you call it yes, but that's not all. She has my heart in the palm of her hand and I don't think she's ever gonna let it go. With all the bullshit I've put her through, all the crazy things that I've done and all the crazy things that she's done, she's still here. No one else makes me feel the way she does, no one else will ever have my heart the way she does. I love Jo so much it makes me want to laugh at myself for being this head over heels for her. "My man's faithful as hell…give him your number if you want to. I should text her off my phone and tell her about herself."

"You know I love you, right?" I put my hand in the middle of her back.

"Mhm." She nods her head. "I know you love me. I know you're not going anywhere…that's why I'm not mad at you." She dries my hand off on her shirt. "But I'm not gonna keep getting disrespected by people around here. Especially people that already know what it is between me and you. Like, it's one thing to flirt with a guy that you don't know is taken but when you know a man is taken and you still go after him anyway? You're a tramp and you're disrespectful. She has kids and she's probably all married and everything and she's trying to steal somebody's boyfriend? Go get a life. Bethany…I think that's Noelle's mom. I should tell Lyla to beat Noelle up. But I'm not gonna do that because unlike her, I'm respectful." She rolls her eyes. "I should kill her. But I won't."

"Oh Jo…you're so crazy."

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"Yeah, there's a hurricane warning…it's storming pretty bad right now but that's pretty much it." I pace back and forth across the porch with the phone held to my ear. It feels really good outside right now. It's raining it's ass off right now and the power's been flickering on and off in the house but out here on the porch, it's kind of soothing. The wind is blowing pretty hard, which is causing raindrops to flow on the porch and mist over my ankles and it feels so good. I like sitting outside and watching storms. Granted, I can't see much right now considering the fact that it's 9:00 at night and it's dark but still…just being outside in the midst of the storm is oddly comforting to me. I already did my mother stuff and I can sit out here with the storm for as long as I want to. Lyla's in bed, I'm showered and clean, Alex is taking a shower right now and all is right with the world. "Alex says that the hurricane warnings never amount to much. Said they usually hit around Miami, Orlando, Daytona and die down once they get around to Pensacola. He said we're only going to get the rain of it. I've been watching the weather channel though…keeping tabs on it."

"Stay safe down there, Jo. I mean it. I'm going through enough up here by myself. I don't need to add worrying about you to my plate."

"Yeah, I know. We'll be alright though, mom. It's just a warning. The weather channel said it's only serious if it's an actual hurricane watch. It's still a warning." I rub my nose because it's itching and pace back around to the backside of the porch again. "We have everything though. Flashlights, candles, batteries…milk, bread, eggs and toilet paper. We're prepared just in case."

"Alright. I guess I'm gonna have to trust you then, aren't I?" She doesn't sound too happy. "…You know I still need you to apologize to him, don't you? You were out of line Jo. You know you were."

"I'm not apologizing." I shake my head and lean against the balcony, which is wet but I don't care. I can always change my pants. "You're gonna just let him talk to me that way, mom? He called me a bitch. He straight up called me a bitch and I heard him. I heard him say it. He said 'Terri, your daughter's a little bitch'. I'm not apologizing. He can kiss my shiny ass because I'm not apologizing to that worthless piece of shit." When I talked to her last week, I got into a pretty nasty argument with her boyfriend over the phone. He just pissed me off. I don't feel like he's treating my mother right and that's not flying with me. So I called him out and we had it out. "I don't see you demanding an apology from him."

"He's not my daughter, Josephine. I can't control what comes out of his mouth but I can control what comes out of yours and you were raised better than that. You were raised to respect your elders and you know you were. And you're all the way in Florida. You don't know what the hell is going on in my house, Jo. You don't know what I said to him. You know damn well I didn't let him get away with calling you a bitch." She sighs into the receiver. "You were being a bitch though. There was no reason for you to bark at him the way you did. All he did was ask me who I was talking to. He's allowed to ask, Jo."

"It's none of his damn business who you're talking to though! He doesn't control your damn life and I'm not about to let him. I don't care if I'm in a different state or under the same roof. I don't give a damn, mom. I'm not about to let some asshole with a penis dictate your life. You worked too hard—"

"I'M THE MOTHER, JO! Why do you forget that?! You don't get to tell me what I'm going to do! I'm not your friend, Jo! Dammit, we've had this discussion before and I'm NOT about to have it with you again! You're MY daughter and it's not the other way around! I don't need you to protect me. I know what I'm doing. I'm 45 years old. I'm a grown ass woman and I'm not going to sit around and let my daughter tell me what to do. Better yet, I'm not going to sit around and let my daughter mouth off to a man that's 21 years older than she is! Have some damn respect. Your mouth sometimes…I love you so much but I swear to god, I want to cut out your tongue."

"So is that how it's gonna be, mom?" I lick my lips and try to fight off tears. "You're gonna side with him over me? You're gonna choose a man over your daughter? Is that how it's gonna be?"

"Josephine Elizabeth Wilson, don't you dare! Don't do it, Jo. Don't even do it." I pissed her off bad. Tears start rolling down my cheeks though. "You KNOW that's not what's happening here. You know I love you and you know damn well I do everything in this world for you…I always have. You're not going to send me on a guilt trip for having a man in my life now, Jo. I'm not going to let you do it. I'm not picking a man over my baby and you know that's not what I'm doing. I'm telling you as your MOTHER that you need to grow the hell up. I have my OWN life now, Jo. I have my own life, my own boyfriend and as long as he's not treating me wrong, it's NOT up for you to dispute! You're not a baby anymore, Jo. I have my own life apart from you. For the 29 years you've been on this earth with me, YOU have been my life. You still are but you're not the only factor in it anymore. Don't you dare try and make me seem like a monster mother that chooses boyfriends over my child. How many men have I ever dragged around you, Josephine?! How many?! None! I didn't have men running in and out of your life when you were a child because I had respect for YOU. Now I finally have one and you blow up? This is not me siding with him over you. This is me…siding for what's right and you were WRONG last week, Jo. You were wrong. And of course I dug into him for calling you a bitch. I'm not going to let a man disregard my child and you better believe I had a word with him for calling you that. But I'm not about to sit here and let you rip my relationship apart when you're all the way in Florida and you don't know what in the blue hell is going on here in New Jersey. I don't want to have to talk to you about this again, Jo. I don't want to talk to you about this again. Do you hear me?" I say nothing. I sniff and wipe my tears though. "DO YOU HEAR ME?!"

"Yes." I mumble through my tears.

She clears her throat and in typical Teresa fashion, she drops the entire subject. "Now what's going on down there? What's Alex and that baby up to?"

"…Nothing." I'm not as good at pushing things aside as my mom is. "She's sleeping because she has school tomorrow…and Alex is…" I sniff again because I'm still crying. My mom's the only person that can make me cry so easily. I don't like it when she yells at me because I just translate yelling into disappointment and I don't ever want to disappoint her. I want her to be proud of me. "He's in the shower."

"Stop crying, Jo. I love you but I can't stand you sometimes. But stop crying. It's not that serious. If it ever came down to choosing between you and him, you know he'd lose in a hot second. Stop crying, suck it up and talk to me. You two finally got that baby in school though?"

"Yeah." I wipe my tears again. "She's doing really well. I volunteered to…help out with the Halloween party at her school. I'm gonna make dirt and sand for it. And I think I'm going to Disney On Ice next week with her. She asked me to chaperone." I clear my throat once I'm finally done crying.

"That sounds like fun." I hear her tone heighten. "I'm real proud of you for stepping up and being someone that little girl can count on. I think that's a very admirable thing you're doing, Moe. I'm proud of you for that. But how'd your interview go? You think you got the job?"

"I think so, yeah. He wants to hire me as a temp sub first because the Stats teacher I'm replacing has to finish out the first nine weeks. So I wouldn't start until like…December. But I'd be subbing as needed for right now. Which is fine with me because at least I still have a job waiting for me. I think I'm gonna go enroll in classes at the community college next week too."

"I'm proud of you for going back to school too. I'm glad you're finally going to do what you wanted to do all along. And I'm glad that Alex is supportive of that. He's a good man."

"He is." I agree with her. "He's a good man."

"Have you two had sex yet?" My jaw drops when she just casually asks. "Last time I talked to you about your sex life, you two had the awkward sex. You guys have fixed that, right?"

"…Yes, mom." I shake my head at her forwardness.

"Are you using protection?"

"No. We don't use condoms or anything but I trust him. He's clean and all that. He doesn't cheat on me."

"You really think you and Alex are ready to be parents to a child TOGETHER at this point in your relationship, Jo? Use condoms for crying out loud."

"I can't get pregnant though mom, so what's the use? What's the point? We've been having unprotected sex for months now. If I was gonna get pregnant, I would've been pregnant by now. It's not going to happen. I'm broken."

"You can still get pregnant with one ovary Jo, how many times do I have to tell you?"

"Okay, yeah I can but how likely is that? And even if I do, the egg won't implant. My cervix is all effed up. I'M all effed up. I can't have babies, mom. What's the use in using condoms?"

"You might be right but I still think you should protect yourself." She sighs. "So how is the sex? Is it any good?"

"MOM!"

"What? If there's anybody you can talk to about it, it's me. Is it good?"

"Well…yeah." I shrug my shoulders. "I guess. I mean…I cried, if that says anything."

"Is he that big?!"

"MOM IT'S NOT LIKE THAT! OH MY GOD!" I close my eyes and shake my head. I can't believe her right now. "It…I cried because it felt so good! Not because he was hurting me!"

"…You shouldn't be crying during sex, Moe….that's not normal."

"I wasn't like BAWLING my eyes out! It was like…oh my god, I can't believe I'm about to explain this to you." My cheeks flush. "You know when…when it starts feeling so good that you try to like…stop the guy?"

"Yeah."

"Well I tried to stop him and he wouldn't and it felt so good that I had to shed a tear or two. It wasn't like I started sobbing. It was just one tear."

"…Hmmm…sex so good it makes you cry…I gotta get me some of that."

"TERESA!" This is so awkward. She starts laughing into the receiver, which in turn, makes me laugh too. In the middle of my laughter, my phone starts beeping. "…Mom, I've got another call…hold on, okay?"

"No, it's fine. I'll let you go. I wanna go eat something and take a shower. I'll call you tomorrow, Momo. I love you."

"Love you too mom." I mumble and click over to the other line. "Hello?"

"Come upstairs when you're done outside. The power's out and I have the candles upstairs." It's nobody but Alex calling.

"Okay."

 **X X X**

"Alex, are you serious right now?!" Still groggy with sleep, I spring up out of the bed and rub my eyes, waking myself up far before my body was even ready to wake up. I rolled over and I felt that his side of the bed was empty and I immediately woke up. I'm actually glad that I did roll over and end up waking up because he's fresh out of his goddamn mind. It's 6:00 in the morning and he's sitting here getting ready for work. Nevermind the fact that at 10:00 last night, the preschool's automated messaging system called the house and said that school is cancelled today due to inclement weather. Nevermind the fact that at 12:00 last night, the hurricane warning turned into a hurricane WATCH. Nevermind all of that, right? His stupid ass is getting dressed for WORK. "Get back into bed…you're not going to work today. Arizona will understand." I yawn and touch my feet down on the floor. I drag my tired feet over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. "It's storming so bad out there and my phone said that the hurricane's coming. It's been storming since last night. T-the power's still out! Get back in bed…come on." I pull him towards me and he snatches away. "Alex, GET in bed!" I squeeze his arm. "NOW!"

"Get off me, Jo. I have to go. I'm not leaving Arizona there by herself today. The storm knocked out the power. She's up there in the NICU with a bunch of sick babies, waiting for the generator to kick on and I'm not about to leave her there alone. I'll be fine. You go back to bed. I'll be home at 3:00." He buckles his watch around his wrist and starts shoving his feet into shoes. "I'm a doctor. I took an oath to help people and not just people, KIDS. _Sick_ kids. I have to go." He kisses me on my forehead. "I'll see you later." He grabs his jacket and hurries out of the room but of course, I follow him.

"Alex, STOP! I don't care about your stupid oath, I'm not about to let you go out there in the middle of a hurricane and get yourself killed! The emergency weather app on my phone said that nobody should be travelling in these conditions! I'm not about to let you go out there and get killed! What do you, think they cancelled preschool today for their health?! It's DANGEROUS out there!" I grab his arm before he starts walking down the steps. "Alex, PLEASE. Arizona will understand! You live half an hour away….don't go." I pull him towards me but again, he snatches away and starts jogging down the steps. I jog after him, holding onto the railing for my balance. "ALEX!" I scream at him at the top of my lungs. "No!" I barrel in front of him and step in front of the door. "…Give and take, remember? Give and take….give me this." He nudges me to the side. "STOP! I'M NOT ABOUT TO LET YOU GO OUT THERE! It's a matter of your safety now, Alex! I'm telling you that you're not going to work today!"

"Jo, I will be FINE. I know how to drive in the rain. It's nothing but a little rain. I'll be alright. I'll call you when I get there." He nudges me again. "I'm going to work. I can't leave Arizona alone in the middle of a storm like this. The NICU is understaffed and she needs help. The KIDS need help. Just move out of my way…I'll be alright."

"No!" I didn't even realize I was crying until just now when a tear rolled off my cheek and splashed down on my arm. "…Alex, I already lost a man that I loved…please don't make me do this again. Please. Do this for me. Do this for me. Please don't go out there. Please. Baby, we can just go upstairs and lay in bed all day…me, you, Lyla…we can play board games and everything. Please don't go out there. Alex, I can't lose you. I can't do it. I can't lose another man that I love. Please don't go. Please don't go. Just call off….please."

"You're not going to lose me." He moves my hand away from the doorknob. "I'll see you later, Jo." He opens the door up.

"DAMMIT, ALEX!" I let my emotions overcome my actions and I end up shoving him out the door. "I hate you so much! Just go!" Without even looking back at me, he walks right the door and closes it behind him. He's gonna die. He's gonna die and I'm never going to be okay. I slam my back against the door out of frustration and clasp my hands over my face. I slide my hands up and grab two handfuls of my hair and yank it so hard. I can't believe he left! In the middle of a hurricane! He's gonna die. I slide down until my butt is on the floor and my knees are up into my chest.

And all I can do is cry.


	62. How Do I?

I keep my knees tucked up into my chest and my face down, buried in my legs. I can't believe I'm really sitting here on the kitchen floor in nothing but my underwear and a t-shirt. My butt is freezing against this cold linoleum floor and the heels of my feet are aching from supporting all my weight against them but something within my body is preventing me from picking myself up off the floor and going back to the bedroom. Even more than I can't believe that I'm actually sitting here on this floor crying my eyes out, I can't believe that he actually left. I can't believe he really snatched away from me the way he did and I can't believe that despite my best efforts to prevent him from doing so, he left out of this house. He left me here, alone, by myself with Lyla in the middle of a tropical thunderstorm. In the middle of a storm! The weather stations said that nobody should travel when the weather is as bad as it is because it's dangerous. It's dangerous out there and he's driving half an hour away to a lousy hospital to show up for work. How stupid could he be? He didn't have to go. I'm sure Arizona would've understood if he called off and said that he wasn't able to come in. Millerton is under a hurricane watch. It's not a warning anymore, it's a legit watch and it means that we are GOING to be hit by a hurricane. And he's gone. He's gone and we could be hit by a hurricane at any minute. How could he just leave me like this? I shouldn't have to beg him to stay with me. I'm scared and I'm alone and he's gone and I really don't think he's going to come back. I think if he comes back…he's going to come back in a body bag. I'm so scared. That could very well could be the last time I ever see him alive and the last thing he heard me say is "I hate you." I don't hate him. I don't hate him, I love him so much.

I was sleeping. Can I go back to that? I was sleeping so soundly with him in the bed next to me and one second, all I do is roll over. I rolled over and the sheets were cold and empty and that made me wake up. Alex and I…we don't have to cuddle every night. I don't have to sleep in his arms or on his chest to have a good sleep at night but I will wake up if I even feel that he's not in the bed with me. He wasn't in the bed with me and I immediately woke up as soon as I realized that he wasn't and thank god I did. Thank god I woke up when I did. I slept through him ironing his clothes, washing his face and brushing his teeth. When my eyes opened, I saw him shoving his legs into a pair of jeans. I begged him to stay. I don't beg anyone for anything yet, I woke up from a dead sleep and started begging him to stay with me. I just wanted him to stay. That's all I wanted. All I wanted was for him to stay. I didn't fall asleep until 2:30 in the morning last night because I was so scared of the storm and Alex knows that. I only got four hours of sleep before I woke up and started begging him. I'm not a big wuss that's afraid of thunderstorms; that's not it. I've just never been in a hurricane before and that's scary. My point is though, I'd much rather be upstairs in the bed, cuddled up with my boyfriend knowing that the both of us are safe together than in danger apart. But he left me. It's dangerous out there, he could die and he left me. He left me. _I'm so tired…_

I'm not ready to lose him and I really, deep within my heart, feel like he's going to die out there. They cancelled Lyla's preschool today because it's too dangerous out there to drive. The emergency weather services sent out a message on all telephones to say that it is too dangerous outside to drive. And of course, my boyfriend's gotta be the asshole to go out in the middle of a hurricane. Sniveling, I pick my head up and look around the kitchen, tears making it almost impossible for me to see clearly. I slam my head back hard, against the wall and roll my eyes up at the ceiling. I'm not ready to lose him. I just got him and I just realized that I love him and he's just now starting to really make me happy. I can't lose him. if I lose him…I really don't think I'm going to love anybody else ever again. He doesn't know how much he means to me. If he knew how much he means to me, he wouldn't have left. If he knew just how much I love him, he would've understood that my begging and my pleas weren't because I was too scared to be here alone. He would've known that I was begging and pleading him to stay because I'm scared to death of losing him. I already lost someone I loved. And it's really freaking me out because there is a very real possibility that I'm going to lose Alex in the same way I lost Mark. He's in a car. He's in a car…right now. I slowly lower my head down from staring up at the ceiling and flicker my eyes over to the clock on the stove.

My jaw starts trembling uncontrollably when I notice that he's been gone for 45 minutes already. He left the house around 6:00. It's 6:46 right now. On a normal day, he would've called already to tell me that he made it to work alright since it only takes half an hour to get to the hospital from Millerton but he hasn't called yet. My phone is sitting on the ground next to me and it hasn't buzzed, hasn't twitched, hasn't even lit up since he left. My phone has been dormant since he left and that fact has been cutting me like a knife. On a normal day, he would've called around 6:35 to tell me he got there safely…he hasn't called yet. He hasn't called yet and I really don't think he will. I put my head right back down into my knees and try to calm myself down. I really can't. I can't calm myself down. I'm too scared. I take a deep breath and when I exhale, a moan comes out of my mouth. What if he really doesn't come home?

All of a sudden, the sound of knocking on the door makes me jump and I quickly pull myself together. Whoever it was that knocked on the door, they knocked hard enough to make my back shake since it' was resting against the door when the knocking started. I sniff, wipe my face and reluctantly pick myself up off the floor. What if it's Alex? What if he started driving up the highway, saw that it was getting too dangerous out there for him and decided to turn around and come home? I wipe my face with my t-shirt and try to look like I wasn't just bawling my eyes out the way I just was. I sniff hard again and swallow back the lump that formed in my throat. Outside the door, I can see the silhouette of the person that was knocking. Whoever it was, it's definitely a man. He has broad, squared off shoulders and a very stocky build. It's Alex. My heart feels like it's about to burst into a million tiny little pieces. He came home. Hhe came ome and that means so much to me. I don't care why he came home, all I care about is the fact that he DID come home. I'm hoping that he got caught in the storm and had enough sense to turn his ass around and come home, but I will accept it if turns out that Arizona called and told him not to come in after all. Like I said, I don't really care why he came home. All I care about is the fact that he is home. I wipe my face off once again, pull down the oversized t-shirt of his that I wore to bed last night and unlock the door to finally let him in. I can hear the pounding of raindrops on the roof, the wind blowing viciously and knocking the trees against the side of the house. It's pretty bad off out there. I twist the doorknob and yank the door open, prepared to lecture him about why he should've kept his behind in the house in the first place.

When I get the door open though, I see that it's not Alex at all. It's not him…and when I see who it actually is, my heart falls down to the pit of my stomach and my chest feels empty. I feel hollowed out, barely even alive and completely catatonic. Like someone shot a cannon clean through the middle of my stomach and took all my insides out right along with it. I'm so sure that the core of my body is gone that I literally bring my hand up and rest it against my stomach to check and see if I have a hole there where the rest of my body used to me. I'm surprised to find that there's actually skin there. The person…or people, rather, standing on the porch are dressed in black uniforms with shiny silver and gold badges clipped to their breast pockets. Both of them are dripping wet from the rain but they also have hats pressed neatly on their heads. My legs feel like my kneecaps have just abandoned them so I have to grip the door for support before my legs buckle and give out on me. "Does an Alexander Karev live here?" The one that did the initial knocking is clutching a notepad in his hand and an opened wallet…a wallet that belongs to Alex. I blankly nod my head. "Ma'am, there's been an accident…" He starts and I can't do anything but shake my head.

I stumble backwards into the house and I feel like my head was taken off my body and spun on it's edge, like a top whirling and spinning and making myself dizzy. I can hear my heart beating in my ears so I know I'm still alive but I can't say for certain if I'm breathing or not. This can't be happening to me. This cannot be happening to me. This isn't happening. Like I knew they would, my legs give out and double over, bracing my hands against my kneecaps for stability. I close my eyes and try breathing through my nose…and I feel like I just left my body. Like none of this is actually happening to me. Like I'm watching a scene from a movie playing on an overhead projector. Like I'm watching myself from afar, watching all the events take place and watching myself break down…

Her legs crumble like the weight of her body is too much to bear and although she was bracing herself against her knees, she loses control and eventually falls to the floor. Without even caring that her underwear could be exposed, she resorts herself to laying in the fetal position on the floor with her legs tucked neatly into her chest and her hands clasped tightly over her face. It smells like him…the t-shirt she's wearing. It smells like aftershave and his manly deodorant. She loves it, inhales it, trying to avoid thinking about the reason why his scent is all she has left. The officers look at each other, sorrow written clear across their face but professional as informing people of bad news is part of their job. "We are terribly sorry…for your loss, Mrs. Karev." Jo flinches at the way those two words sting. _Mrs. Karev._ She didn't realize how bad she actually wanted to be Mrs. Karev until every hope, every chance she ever had of being Mrs. Karev was wiped away in an instant. _Terribly sorry._ She thinks to herself. That means nothing. Sorrow isn't going to take away the pain.

Her hands start shaking first, then her arms, down to her shoulders until eventually, her entire body is shaking. "If you'll just come with us…to identify the body…" The second officer walks into the house and tries to offer some sort of comfort but there is none. How could anyone comfort her in this moment? She opens her mouth up to tell those officers to leave her alone but instead of words, crying moans come out. She hears herself crying…she hears herself wailing. She finds herself again…

They want me to get up and go with them but I don't know how. I don't know how to stand up. I feel like someone is stabbing me in the back with a bunch of top blade kitchen knives and expecting me to get up and be okay long enough to breathe. I don't know how to breathe anymore. How do I breathe without him? How am I supposed to live when he was the reason I started living again? Where do I do go from here when his heart is the only place I know how to exist? But more importantly than anything, how am I supposed to breathe? How am I supposed to get up and act like I'm okay? I feel different already. There's no one here for me to turn to. Why'd he have to go? How could he leave without saying goodbye? I keep picturing his smile inside of my head…more tears flood my face and make my eyes sting. Just yesterday, he was hounding me about wearing skimpy clothes. I was joking around, talking about beating a girl up that gave him her number. We were kissing last night. He kissed me this morning. The last thing he heard me say was that I hated him. I need him to come back. I just need him to come back. I knew it. I knew it. I knew he was gonna go off and get himself killed. Dammit, Alex…why couldn't you have just stayed? I'm so confused right now. I'm a mixture of everything but right now, confused. How could things be so right one minute and so wrong the next? How could he leave me like this? Without saying goodbye?

When I close my eyes, I can see his smile inside of my head. He didn't know how to smile. He looked like an idiot when he smiled but I loved it. I loved it so much when he smiled. Especially when he'd smile at me. I inhale again, taking in the scent of his t-shirt and when I exhale, it seems like a river of tears spill out of my eyes. I'm hurting so bad. I'm hurting so, so bad…and he's not here. He's not here to hold me an hug me and say "It's okay, Jo" like he always does. I know I don't believe in god, I know I was never religious but I swear I'll go to church from now until the end of time if god just gives him back. Please give him back to me. I can't do this again. I can't do this again…I can't. I'm not strong enough to do this again. Please give him back. I'm not strong enough for this. It hurts so much worse this time. It hurts. It hurts…oh god, it hurts. I loved him. I still love him but…he was it for me. He was it. He was the reason for everything. He was the plan for me the entire time. He was the reason Mark died, the reason I left Chamberlain, the reason I took that bus and ended up in Millerton, the reason I ended up in Millerton and decided to stay, the reason I could live again. He was the reason. He was the plan for me all along…my soulmate. I don't even believe in that crap but he was it for me. He was the one. The person that god or fate had intended me to be with all along…and he's gone. I can't do it this time around. "Mrs. Karev…" The officer touches my shoulder but I snatch away. Stop calling me that! I'm not Mrs. Karev…I want to be so bad. I want to marry him and be with him and grow old with him. Stop calling me that. I'm not Mrs. Karev. I want to be so bad but I never can be.

What's his body going to look like? Is he going to be bloody? Will I know it's him? What's the car look like? What happened? I don't want to know. I just want him to be alive. I bet he's still beautiful. I bet he's perfect like he always was. I bet that fluffy hair is still soft, I bet those cheekbones are kissable, I bet those lips are soft. They're probably cold now, but they're going to be soft. I'm going to kiss them. I'm going to kiss those lips again. Is he in one piece? Will his head be smashed and dented in like Marks? Will I be able to recognize him? Dear god, please give him back. I know he's perfect and I can understand why you'd want him up there with you but please give him back. I can't live without him. I don't know how to go on without him. You have to give him back, god. I don't know how to be without him. I miss him so much already. WHY'D HE HAVE TO GO OUT?! I TOLD HIM NOT TO! God…

He's an asshole! He's a fucking asshole! I told him not to go! I begged him, pleaded with him…DAMMIT ALEX. No, serves him right. That's what he fucking gets. I'm glad the last thing he heard me say was that I hate him. I do hate him. I hate his guts. I hate his guts for being so fucking stupid. I hope he suffered! I hope he sat there in that car…or whatever and thought about how right I was! I hope he fucking suffered. That's what he gets! I'll never forgive him for this. I'll never forgive him for being defiant, for going out when I told him not to, for being hardheaded and for making me fall so head over heels in love with him! I hate Alex. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!

But god, I love him. God, I love him so much and I need him. I need him. I can't live without him. I can't live in a world where he doesn't exist. I thought we were going to be together forever. I probably sound naïve and stupid but I really did think that I was going to be with him forever. Alex…why? He was only out of the house for 45 minutes. He should've realized that it was too dangerous and he should've come home. Why, Alex? I saw a future with him. I really, really did. I knew I wasn't going to have his babies because that's impossible but I did see myself marrying him and becoming Lyla's official stepmother. Now I have to go to a morgue and identify his body? But he's my baby. He's my BABY. I'd do anything in this world for him. He's my baby…my baby. My baby. The love of my life, my soulmate, my best friend. I love him. How could he be gone? I can't do it. I can't go to a morgue and tell someone that yes, the body they have is my baby's body. I'm never going to get over this. I'm never going to be who I was before him. I'm never going to be myself anymore. I wanted to be with him and Lyla forever. Lyla…oh my god, Lyla… I finally pick my head up off the floor with a screaming, pounding headache and try to think of how I'm going to explain this to her. How am I gonna tell her that daddy's dead now too? I don't know…I just don't know.

 _I blink my eyes twice, my head is ponding pretty hard_. I look around the kitchen. My back…my back is against the door? My vision is a bit blurry at first but I close my eyes tight and blink them once again, bringing everything back into focus. The clock on the stove reads 7:15. 7:15? I wrinkle my brow and bring my hand up, only to find that my legs are pulled up into my chest and my face is dry. My eyes aren't stinging from crying, my cheeks are dry and my mouth is kind of dry. My back is still against the door. I look around the kitchen some more and find that I'm alone. No police officers, no me laying on the floor in a mess of Alex's clothes and tears. Everything is as it should be. Did I cry myself to sleep? And have the worst possible dream I could've ever had? I stifle a yawn with my hand and look to my left. Sure enough, my phone is still sitting on the floor next to me undisturbed. I take a deep breath to calm myself down and rest my head against the wall. Oh my god, that was horrible. That was awful. That was the worst dream I've ever had in my entire life. Oh my GOD that awful. I've never had a dream like that before in my life and I NEVER want to have that dream again.

That was awful.

 **X X X**

"Lyla…" I open up her bedroom door and check to see if she's awake. She's still knocked out in her bed, which she should be as it's only 8:00 in the morning. I guess I shouldn't bother her if she's still asleep. I kind of want to wake her up because after having that dream about Alex, I don't really want to be alone. I want some company pretty badly because I'm probably not going to be able to fall back asleep after having that dream but if I wake her up, she'll probably be really cranky. I stand in her doorway and silently debate whether or not I should wake her up. She'll be really cranky if I wake her up and when I think about it, waking her up just to keep me company because I'm too scared to fall back asleep is kind of cruel. I should just leave her alone. I sigh and back out of her bedroom, closing the door when I go. I don't know what else I could do to keep myself busy. I want to go back to sleep but I'm too scared to go back to sleep so I need something else to do. I already took a shower. That was the first thing I did when I came upstairs after having that horrible dream. I came upstairs, took a long shower and put on Alex's clothes because I'm still worried about him. I put on a pair of his boxers and one of his t-shirts. I don't know what else I can do. There aren't many options considering the fact that the power's been out since last night. I can't play on my phone because I have to preserve the battery since I have no way of charging it if it dies. I can't watch TV. I can't do anything. The only thing I can do is cook since Alex's stove is a gas stove as opposed to an electric one and needless to say, I don't feel like cooking.

I grab onto the railing and pad my way on the balls of my feet all the way downstairs. Maybe I could sit outside and watch the storm if it's not so bad. I've been getting weather updates on my phone about the progress of the hurricane, which is now called Hurricane Hunter, and it's supposedly going to hit Miami, Daytona and Key West and it's going to eventually make it's way to Tampa, Apalachicola and it's going to hit here in Millerton pretty bad around 5:00. It's not supposed to skip over Pensacola and all it's suburbs like Alex said it would. It's supposed to hit us pretty badly. The only places it's not going to wipe out is Tallahassee and Gainesville. I slip a pair of shoes on my feet and open the door. All it's doing here in Millerton so far is raining pretty hard and blowing hard winds. It's still pretty tame here. I close the door behind myself and walk over to sit on the swing on the porch. I sit down on the swing and look around. The bush in the front yard is blowing so hard to one side that the trunk is starting to snap. It's so dark out here that it looks as if it's 6:00 at night as opposed to 8:00 in the morning.

I'm still pretty shaken up about that dream I had. It felt so real that I had a breakdown about it in the shower. I started thinking about how real it felt…the police officers and seeing them carrying Alex's wallet…and hearing them tell me that there's been an accident. It all felt so real. I felt like my life ended in one split second and I'm not okay with that. That dream didn't do anything but make me realize how badly I can't afford to lose him. If I lose him, I won't be okay. Losing Alex would cut me deeper than losing Mark did. I swore to myself that I would never fall as hard for another man as I did for Mark and I wore to myself that I wasn't going to depend on a man for happiness every again but here I am. If I lost Alex, I'd fall completely apart and at this point, I'm not sure if I would ever be able to recover. I barely recovered from Mark and no offense to my husband because I loved him a lot, but Mark wasn't ANYTHING compared to how I feel about Alex. I wholeheartedly believe that Alex is my meant to be, forever thing. Like he said before, it's not a coincidence that his wife and my husband died on the same day. It's not a coincidence that out of the seven billion people in this world, I was brought to him. It's not a coincidence that I lost a daughter and a husband and he lost a wife and mother. Some things just aren't coincidental. We were meant for each other. I know that now. And I can't lose him. I can't lose someone that makes me feel the way he makes me feel. I can't lose someone that I love so much that I hate. I can't lose him. I can't. I won't be okay if I lose him. I didn't mean to fall for him as hard as I did and loving him sure as hell snuck up on me but I can't go back now.

"Gibby!" I hear someone yell from across the street, which breaks up my thoughts of the dream I had. I don't know whether to be annoyed or glad that the person yelling broke my concentration. "Gibby!" It's a woman's voice that's yelling. "Gibby! Here, boy!" I probably shouldn't, but the nosy part of my personality takes over and I get up off the swing. I drag my feet to the edge of the porch and lean over the railing. Oh. It's that nosy bitch that's yelling. The nosy bitch that has a problem with me for some reason. I roll my eyes and start walking back to the swing. "Gibby!" Who's Gibby? Whoever it is, she sounds pretty frantic to find him or her. "GIBBY!" Instead of sitting down on the swing again, I walk back to the edge of the porch and secretly look around to see if maybe I can tell who she's trying to call. She's standing on her porch in her pajamas, shielding her eyes from the rain and screaming at the top of her lungs. Out in the street, I see a little gray blob just standing there and shivering. Gibby's her dog, I'm guessing. Then why is the dumb animal just standing there and getting rained on? Go in the damn house. "Gibby! Come on!" She puckers her lips and sucks, doing that little dog call thing. The dog starts to move but it seems like he's stuck. I narrow my eyes to see better. Aw…his paw is stuck in one of those drainage ditches. He's stuck. Poor puppy. But if she'd get her ass off the porch and go help him instead of standing there and screaming his name. I shake my head at her laziness and turn around to go back into the house when from the corner of my eye, I see the poor dog try and move again but after this time, he disappears. My jaw drops. I think he just fell down in that drainage ditch.

This isn't my problem. This is totally not my issue. From the day I first moved in here, that woman's been nothing but nasty to me. She thinks I'm bad for Alex, she trash talks me, she's rude to me. Just the other day when I was bringing Lyla in the house from preschool, she was talking to Lyla about it as she was walking her dog at the time and she wouldn't even look at me. She didn't acknowledge my existence or anything. She's rude to me. I shrug my shoulders and walk to the door. …I don't have to be rude back though. Two wrongs don't make a right…I was raised better…I could use Brownie points for the day…maybe this will earn me a Girl Scout's badge of honor. Why must I choose now to be a decent human being? I roll my eyes at myself and turn back around. I jog down off the porch, getting my entire body soaking wet and open up the fence. I'm guessing she saw the dog disappear into the drainage ditch too because she's kneeling at the ditch and desperately trying to rip it open. I push my soaking wet hair away from my face and slosh over to her in my wet slippers. I'm doing this for the dog, not for her. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I let the damn dog drown to death. And for Lyla too….she'd be heartbroken if the dog died. I kneel down next to the ditch with her and wrap my arms around the bars. It lifts up….I've seen people lift these things up. It's just really heavy but luckily for the bitter old woman, I'm a pretty strong female. "Oh…oh gosh…" I pull up on the bars. "It's stuck." Water's pouring in there pretty fast too.

"I know it lifts up. I've seen the street crew lift it up." She's trying to pull right along with me but it's not budging. "I've gotta get him outta there. He's gonna die in there. He's all I've got…my husband died a few years back from a stroke…he's all I've got." She's crying. I lie down on the street and try sticking my arm down into the wide opening that's underneath the curb of the street. My arms obviously can't fit in the bars to the drain but they can fit into the opening that's under the curb. It's a pretty wide opening. The poor dog is standing at the bottom of the ditch and barking. "Move, you're useless!" She pushes me away, which makes me just glare at her.

"I don't have to help you, you know!" I pull my arm out of the opening and push my hair back again. "What did I ever do to you?!" I don't mean to yell at her, it's just that the rain is pouring down so hard that it's pretty loud and I'm also talking over the thunder. "I'm not as big a bitch as you think I am! I think you'd like me if you'd get to know me!" I look down and see that the water level in the ditch has risen and it won't be long until the dog's head is underwater. "…Here!" I kick off my saturated slippers and move my hair back yet again. I crawl on my bare knees over to the opening that my arm could fit into. Oh, the perks of being a tiny person… I turn around so my feet touch down first and I squeeze my entire body through the opening. I'm a pretty tiny person, but I'm not all that tiny. My hips and my knees scrape pretty badly trying to fit in this thing but I'm skinny enough to finally drop down. My feet touch something slimy and squishy at the bottom of the sewer system and I really have to choke back vomit. I can't believe I'm in a sewer. Oh my god. I hold my breath to prevent from blowing chunks and grab the dog. I lift the dog up and squeeze him through the same hole I just squeezed through and the hole he fell through.

"Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" The old woman is pretty enthused that I just saved her dog from certain death but I'm disgusted. I can't believe I'm in a sewer. I find a rocky ledge to brace my foot up on since it was a pretty far drop down to the bottom here. I grab onto the bars of the street drain and pull myself up, only to be weighed down by a large influx of water. I lose my grip and fall back down to the bottom and now the water is up to my chest. "Can you make it?!" She sticks her face to the bars and looks down at me. I nod my head and put my feet on the rocky ledge again. "Should I get help?!" I shake my head and pull my body up so that I'm level with the opening I squeezed through. I pull myself up and actively start trying to squeeze back through the opening. I'm having more trouble this time than I did the last time for some reason. It's a little loud out here between the rain, the sound of water collecting beneath me and the sound of thunder but I swear to god I hear squeaking….I slowly turn my head to the side and look in the direction of the squeaking.

"…OH MY GOD!" I start pulling myself pretty hard. "THERE'S A RAT! GET ME OUT OF HERE!" I think I'm having a panic attack right now. There's a fucking rat right by my foot! "OH MY GOD!" I open my mouth to scream and when I do, rain water just pours into my mouth but somehow, I manage to pull the rest of my body up out of this sewer. Coughing really hard from swallowing so much water, I crawl on my knees over to a safe part of the street. I cough so hard that my shoulders hunch, my stomach tightens and I end up throwing up nothing but water. My eyes are watering from choking so hard but I'm alright. I have a tear in my shirt right above my bellybutton and my elbows are scraped up pretty bad but I'm alright. I turn around and sit on my butt, still recovering from my choking spell. My knees are dripping blood down my legs too but like I said, I'm okay. That's what I get for crawling into a street drain that I could barely fit in. I roll my eyes up to the sky and cough hard some more. I better have punched my ticket to heaven for this.

"Let me clean those up for you." Mrs. Jensen puts her hand underneath my armpit and helps me up onto my feet. "Come on." She sounds really gentle and she's being pretty gentle. I have to go back home. Lyla's in there alone right now and I have to get back to her. I never even meant to leave the porch in the first place. "Just come right into my kitchen."

"I can't." I cough again and start backpedaling. "I have to go home. I'll be fine. They're just brush burns." I blink and watch raindrops flood in front of my face. "…Watch your dog better next time."

"Thank you, Jo." She puts her hand on my shoulder and looks at me with genuine gratitude in her eyes. "Thank you for doing that. You…you could've drowned down there. All for my dog. Thank you so much."

"It's no big deal." I shake my head. "I have to go home…."

"I was wrong about you." She tucks the mutt underneath her arm and rubs my shoulder. "I misjudged you. I was wrong…and I'm sorry. I was wrong about you."

"Yeah…you were." I look down at the brush burns on my knees and find that my big toe is bleeding too. "But that's okay. Most people are wrong about me. I'm a person you've gotta get to know to like." I feel another cough coming on. "Just watch your dog better next time."

I'm going to go clean these brush burns up.

 **X X X**

Thankfully, Lyla's still asleep. I can only imagine how badly she would've freaked out if she woke up to find that she was alone in the house by herself. I never meant to even leave the porch. I didn't meant to leave her alone and I sure as hell didn't meant to crawl into a damn sewer to save an animal that isn't mine. I stuff my towel up underneath my armpit so it'll stay up better and continue dabbing the washcloth on my kneecap. I think I took an hour in the shower, maybe more. But look, I think Alex will understand if his water bill is astronomical because of me. I was in a SEWER. I have good reason to believe that he'd understand. I just soaked in the steaming hot water for half an hour and let the soap seep into my pores for the other half hour. I felt disgusting. Once I finally get my knee to stop bleeding, I toss the bloody washcloth into the hamper and walk into the bedroom again. I don't know if crawling in a street drain and getting scared half to death by a rat just to save a dog was worth it, but I guess I'm glad that I finally got that bitter old woman to realize that I'm not as horrible as she thought I was. I made mistakes in my past…mistakes that got people killed, but I'm not a monster and I'm not here to drag Alex and Lyla down. I'm glad she sees that I'm actually a decent person now.

I walk over to Alex's dresser for the second time today and grab another pair of his boxers. Instead of a t-shirt this time, I grab one of his black wife-beater tank tops. Luckily I'm not too banged up from crawling in that drain like that. I have a couple brush burns on my elbows, a couple on my knees, a little one on my stomach and my toe is sore but only because I stubbed it while trying to climb up. I'm alright. I drop my towel since I'm dry and pull on Alex's boxers. I don't even bother to put my own underwear on. I don't put a bra on either. I slip the tank top on too and crawl into the bed. I'm still a little bit nervous to go to sleep but I decided in the shower that having a nightmare beats the hell out of sitting outside and finding myself in the middle of saving an old woman's dog. I should've just gone to sleep from the start. Granted, if I had chosen to go to sleep instead of sitting outside on the porch, her dog would be dead right now but at least I wouldn't have to live with the fact that I crawled into a sewer for a woman that hated my guts.

I slam my head down on Alex's pillow and look at the clock on his nightstand. It's 9:40. I pull the blankets up to my neck and close my eyes. On the bright side of being in a sewer for a dog today…Maybe now I'll actually go to heaven.

You know, if that sort of thing exists.

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I tiptoe up the steps and be careful not to let anybody know that I'm home. Letting people know that I'm home means waking people up because if Lyla and Jo were awake, they'd be making more noise than this. Neither one of them would be this quiet if they were up and about. I'm honestly glad that Jo's asleep. I'm expecting the third degree from her because I have no doubt in my mind that she's pissed at me. She's probably livid right now and when she wakes up, she's going to chew me out for what I did this morning. I guess to a certain extent, I deserve to be yelled at by her but then again, I don't. I deserve it because she was begging and crying this morning for me to stay home and I completely ignored her, but I don't deserve it because I was only doing my job. It's my job to help sick kids no matter what and I wouldn't have liked myself very much if I had left Arizona alone up in the NICU with a power outage by herself, all because my girlfriend didn't want me to drive in a little bit of rain. That's all it was too. It was just really heavy rain all the way up that highway and all the way back. Nothing too scary and nothing for her to have worried about. I made it there and back safely and that's all that matters. And I already know that Jo's going to pull the whole "I quit my job for you when you thought it was too dangerous for me" card on me. I already know she is. Look, I never said that she doesn't have a right to be pissed but I am saying that I don't care if she's pissed. I wasn't about to leave my boss alone during a storm.

Anyway, it all worked out in the end. I got to work, I helped Arizona up in the NICU bag the babies that couldn't breathe on their own. The generator popped on about an hour after I got there, we stabilized all the babies, did some work down on the regular ICU, treated a couple babies and she told me that I could go home at 11:00 so I could beat the hard parts of the storm. I walked through the door at 11:50 and again, all it was was rain out there. I'm fine and I'm not in the mood to hear Jo chew my ass out about what happened this morning, which is why I'm glad she's sleeping. I open up Lyla's door first and check on her. She's still passed out in her bed so I close her door and walk down the hallway to me and Jo's bedroom. I push open the door quietly and peek in before I go inside it. Jo's sprawled out in the middle of the bed with her head on my pillow. She's pretty passed out too. I grin when I see that her mouth is gaped open a little. I did miss her while I was at work. I missed her a whole lot but Jo's always more pleasant when she's asleep and not bitching at me. I unbutton my jeans and take them off. I lift my t-shirt over my head and toss it on the floor right along with my jeans.

I walk over to the bed and slowly peel the covers back so I can get between them right along with her. When I pull the covers back, I notice that she's wearing a pair of my dark blue American Eagle boxers and she's wearing my black tank top. Why is she wearing my crap? Does she not have clean clothes of her own? I shrug it off and climb into the bed with her. I did miss her and I guess I'm willing to risk waking her up and listening to her bitching, because I wrap my arms around her waist and rest my head on the same pillow as hers. I close my eyes, pull her close and settle in to fall asleep right with her. She squirms around a little bit and scoots away from me. I pull her back though. "Mmm…Alex?" Her voice is groggy and muggy with sleep.

"Mhm." I lean up and kiss her on her cheek. "Go back to sleep." I mumble and start stroking her hair because stroking her hair always puts her to sleep. Jo likes to be rubbed. Any form of rubbing will make her fall asleep. "It's me…go back to bed."

"….No." She completely wakes up and turns toward me. "Alex?" She calls my name as if she can't believe it's me and puts her hand on my cheek. Her eyes are wide and her eyebrows are all wrinkled but maybe that's because she is waking up out of a dead sleep and she's a bit disoriented. "Alex…" She strokes my cheek. "…Baby."

"I got off early." I explain to her. I think something's wrong with her. "Are you okay? What's wrong?" I watch her eyes fill up with tears. "Jo…" At this point, I think I'd rather her yell at me. I'd rather listen to her scream at me than sit here and watch her cry. What's wrong with her? She sits up in the bed and automatically throws her arms around my neck. She throws them around my neck, shoves her face into the crook of my neck, squeezes me tight and starts sobbing. I mean SOBBING, too. Her elbows are bright red, as if they were bleeding at one point in time. She's crying so hard that her entire body is trembling. "Jo…Jo, what's wrong?" I rub her back. "What's wrong?" She shakes her head and blubbers in my ear. "Shh…okay." I wrap my arms around her, hold her and put my lips to her ear. "It's okay, Jo…what's wrong?"

"Alex…" All she does is say my name.


	63. In A While

The middle of my chest has a soaking wet spot with tears dripping from the middle of my pecks all the way down to my bellybutton. I've said it before but I think it bears repeating, I absolutely, positively and totally hate to see Jo cry. I'm not kidding when I say that every time Jo cries, a piece of my soul dies a little. That probably sounds a bit melodramatic but I swear that's the most accurate description I could possibly offer. Every time a tear streams down her cheek, I hear her moan through sobs and hear her breathing hiccup, a piece of myself gets lost. If I had it my way, the only tears Jo would ever cry are tears of joy and I mean that. I think it's because when Jo cries, her cry has the ability to bring even the strongest of men to tears. She's always so firm and strong and tough that you would never even expect for her to shed a tear and when she actually does cry, it's shocking. When she actually does cry, she cries hard too. I don't even know why she's crying right now, all I know is that I came home from work early, climbed in the bed with her, kissed her because I missed her like crazy and she just started bawling. "Shh." I stroke my hands along her bony little back and just let her tears saturate the skin on my chest. I would ask her what's wrong but it's kind of pointless to do that. She won't answer me if I ask her. I already asked her like four different times and all I got out of her were more moans. So I'm just not going to ask anymore. I'm just going to sit here and let her cry for as long as she needs to until she feels better. "Shh…I'm here…"

Slowly, she unwraps her arms from around my neck and starts to lift her head up. I really wish I knew what the hell was wrong with her but I don't. Usually when she starts to pull away from me, it means that she's starting to loosen up and get over whatever it is/was that's bothering her but this time when she unwraps her arms from around me and takes her head off my chest, her crying spell isn't even easing up. Her eyes are all puffy from crying so hard, she's sniffing and hiccupping at regular intervals and she's still crying her heart out. The way she's positioned in the bed next to me, she's resting on her knees with her legs tucked underneath her body but she stands up on her knees now and looks at me with a red, puffy face. I really don't know what's wrong with her but she clearly doesn't want me to hold her anymore so I move my hands away from her. She bawls her hands up into fists and starts punching me, hard and uncontrollably right in my chest as she continues blubbering like a baby. Clearly I've done something but I really don't know what it is. I mean, I'm guessing she's still mad about what happened this morning but I didn't think she was mad enough to hit me for it. She's hitting me hard too. "Next time I…tell you…" She's trying to talk to me but she's being interrupted by breaths and sobs. She stops punching me in my chest and wraps her hands around my neck. "YOU BETTER LISTEN TO ME, ALEX! I'M NOT FUCKING AROUND!"

Just as I start to pry her arms from around my neck, her chokehold turns soft and she wraps her arms around my neck once again and starts bawling all over again against my chest. I got it now. She didn't give away much and she didn't say much, but she didn't really need to. It doesn't take me much to realize that she's not hitting me because she's mad at me or anything like that; she's hitting me because I scared her. I didn't know it was that serious. She _did_ tell me that she hated me this morning but I know that she didn't mean it and I thought she'd be past it already. I didn't think it was that serious. I know I scared her by leaving and I know she was scared of the storm but I really…didn't think it was that serious. If I had known how serious she was about it, I would've never left. Slowly, I bring my arms up and put them around her body again. You know what? I don't think she thought I was going to come home. That's the only logical explanation, right? The only way she would be both angered and overjoyed to see that I'm home is if she didn't think I was going to come home. I didn't know she was this freaked out over the storm. I didn't know she thought I was going to die. "I'm right here, Jo." I hold her tightly against my body and start scooting down so we can lay down in the bed. "I'm not going anywhere." It sure seems like she needs to hear me say that. It seems like she needs me to reiterate to her that I'm not going anywhere. "I'm right here." I slip my hands up underneath the black tank top of mine that she has on and rub my fingertips across her bare back. "Shh…I'm right here."

"I-I-I…" She hiccups against my chest again and lays down on the pillow I was leading her to. I lay down too and adjust myself so that I'm laying on my side. She's laying on her side too, facing me, with her arms around my neck and with her face smashed into the crook of my neck. I keep caressing her softly. "I thought I lost you for a second. Don't do that to me." She snivels and coughs. "Don't do that."

"I won't." I kiss her neck but not in a sexual way. "I won't…I promise, I won't. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." I kiss her cheek next. "I'm sorry." I feel really bad for scaring her as bad as I appear to have scared her. I didn't know it was this serious though. I probably should have…I guess I was just being insensitive. I knew she was scared this morning, which is why she was begging me to stay, but I realize how that it goes a little bit deeper than her being afraid of the storm itself. I'm pretty sure that she was afraid of losing me. Losing me as in me…dying. She's been through this before. She lost a man that she loved and in the same way too. I was being insensitive and now I feel bad. I just wasn't thinking. "I'm sorry…you forgive me?" She nods her head. "Good…I love you, Jo. I love you…and I'm not going anywhere. You hear me? I'm here forever…I promise. Forever…you know what that means?" She nods her head and finally, she's starting to calm down. Her breath tickles my bare chest while she inhales and exhales and I rub the back of her neck. "I'm here forever."

"Forever?" She mumbles into my chest.

I know it sounds bad, but I hesitate to answer her back on that one. I just don't want to say "forever" if I don't mean it, that's all. I don't want to sit here and promise her that I want to be with her forever if I'm not sure I really do. It was probably an asshole move on my part for putting the idea in her head in the first place when I can't retract my statements, but I just don't want to lead her on. So before I say anything to her question of forever, I take a moment to think. Do I really want to be with Jo forever? Do I really want to spend every day for the rest of my life with her? Am I really okay with spending the rest of my life with her? Seeing her every morning when I open my eyes? Growing old with her, kissing this same pair of lips for the rest of my life, having sex with her and only her for the rest of my life? Am I alright with that? I know it's not like we're getting married and taking vows to each other, but if I promise Jo that I want to be her forever, I want to make sure that I make a sincere promise. If I give her my word on this, I don't want to take it lightly. Making a promise to her is just as good as taking a marriage vow. So I'm asking myself…am I really willing to promise forever with her? A forever with just her? Am I really ready to promise her that?

"Forever." I say it, completely meaning every syllable of the word as soon as I say it. I can spend my life with her. I can see her every morning when I open my eyes. I'm pretty sure I'm going to get down on one knee and ask her to be my wife someday down the line. I can promise her forever. I can assure her that I want to be with her forever. What's weird is that…I never knew that this day would come. Of course I never counted on losing Jenna and having to raise our daughter alone, but that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is a day like this…right now. Not the hurricane, not me coming home and having my girlfriend punch me, but the realization. I never knew that this day would come. The day I realize that my life is meant to be spent with just this one person right here in my arms. I never even knew that my life was incomplete until I met her. I thought I was living and doing alright but no. My life was incomplete and somewhat meaningless until I met her. I want to see her every morning when I open my eyes. I want to feel her heart beating against mine when I hold her for the rest of my life. I can. I can promise her forever without a shadow of doubt in my mind. "I love you." I mumble to her, not even expecting her to say it back at this point. I don't really care if Jo says it back to me. It doesn't change the way I feel about her. "Try and get some sleep…" She sniffs and nods her head. "Night."

"Alex?" She doesn't completely move her face out of my chest, but she does turn her head so that she's not breathing into my skin anymore. "If we're together...forever…do…does that mean…" She sniffs again and picks her head completely up this time, looking at me. "I just don't want you to look at me...one day and just…" She bites down on her bottom lip. "I don't want you to wake up one day, look at me, and see…all the things I couldn't give you. L-like more kids…" The way she says that, I can tell that it's something she's been thinking about a lot. It's like the issue has been weighing on her conscience for a while now. "I just don't want you to think about that…okay? I mean…"

"I don't want more kids. I don't want them. I don't want more kids at all." I shake my head. "I'm good with Lyla. Don't worry about that. Don't worry about that at all, Jo. I'm never going to wake up and see the things you couldn't give me. I'll be way too busy counting all the things you _did_ give me, as opposed to the things you didn't." I pull her back down towards the bed. "Lay down. I said forever and that's what I mean. I meant forever….no matter what, it's forever."

"Okay."

 **X X X**

"Look, daddy…" She taps me on my leg and holds a little yellow daffodil flower up at me. This is pretty much all she's been doing for us. Jo and I are walking around with black trash bags, cleaning up the debris that the storm deposited in our yard and after Lyla begged us to let her come outside to "help" us, all she's been doing is walking around, picking up things she thinks are cool and showing them to us. She hasn't been helping at all. So far, she's shown us a shoelace, a teddy bear's headless body, a car's tire rim and now, a daffodil. That storm wasn't like the other hurricanes in Millerton. Usually when we get hurricanes here, the power gets knocked out for a couple hours, a couple trees get knocked down, garbage cans get turned over and we get rained out. Hurricanes don't usually hit us bad. But this time, it hit us pretty hard. The power was out for two whole days, sixteen people from Pensacola died, the streets were flooded for two days as well, the Red Cross Foundation is taking donations, a few people lost their houses and Mrs. Fisher from down the street's gate is gone. Luckily for us, the most I have to do is go buy some new trashcans. Our house is still standing, my car is relatively unscathed and everyone that I care about is alive. We were pretty fortunate and I think that's thanks to Jo. She's the one that forced us into the basement when the hurricane was in our town. She didn't want to scare Lyla so while we were down in the basement, we mostly played a couple games and that was the end of it.

"Why don't you keep that, Ly?" I take the flower out of her hand and string the stem of it through the lengths of her hair before tucking it neatly behind her ear. "Look how pretty." I ruffle her hair and go back to helping Jo shove garbage into the black trash bags. Hopefully things will go back to normal fairly quickly after the storm. We spent the last two days holed up in the house, eating nothing but potato chips and things like cold cut sandwiches because Jo didn't want to use the stove. Lyla goes back to preschool tomorrow, I'm going back to work tomorrow and although Jo still doesn't have that teaching job secured, she's going to run a few errands tomorrow to keep herself busy. She's going to go grocery shopping and buy the new trashcans. "Jo…hand me that." I put my hand out so she can hand me the trash bag she's lugging around because she's dragging it at this point and I can tell it's getting too heavy for her to carry. She passes it off to me and wipes her hands on the pair of my basketball shorts that she's wearing. I don't know what the deal with her and wearing my clothes is, but I've just been letting her go. None of my clothes can fit her so nine out of ten times, she looks like a homeless person. Like right now, she's wearing a pair of my basketball shorts that are so big on her that she's practically swimming in them and she's wearing one of my t-shirts that comes all the way down to her kneecaps. I tie up the trash bag she just handed to me and open up a new one. "Did you give anymore thought towards going on the F-I-E-L-D trip with her?" I ask.

"Is _Bethany_ going?" She runs her fingers through her hair and uses her t-shirt to wipe sweat off her nose. I roll my eyes at her and continue cleaning up. I know she's just joking around, as she has been ever since the whole Bethany thing started. She's been using Bethany as the punchline of jokes all day though. It's kind of annoying me now. She's been trying to make it seem like I want Bethany. She's called her my "girlfriend", my "little friend" and my "whore". Like earlier, we had about an hour before Lyla woke up from her nap and it's been a while since we've done anything. We haven't had sex in a few days and I wanted some pretty bad. So I started kissing her neck and she stuck her hand down my pants and I really thought we were about to do something but Lyla woke up early and of course, that pissed me off but when I told Jo that I was horny, she said "call your little girlfriend, I'll bet she's willing to give you some." She irritated the hell out of me with that. "Is she?"

"I don't know, Jo." I roll my eyes at her again and start shoving pieces of garbage into the new bag, taking out some anger by throwing the trash into it. How many times do I have to tell her that there's nothing with Bethany? I didn't even know her name. She came onto me. And Jo says that she understands…she says that she's not mad at me and she says that she's fine with the fact that it was Bethany that came onto me but obviously she is pissed off at me if she keeps bringing it up! "Why? So you can kick the girl's ass? If you have a vendetta or something you're trying to get off your chest, just say it Jo! Instead of walking around the house making a fuckin' mockery out of everything…" As soon as I say the "F" word, Lyla looks at me like I just yelled at her personally. I bite my lip, wishing I could take it back. I don't like for her to hear me to cuss but I swear that just slipped. "If you have an issue, just talk to me about it. You've been acting so weird lately." I change my tone to something a bit calmer since Lyla's made it apparent that she's listening to us.

"Baby, why don't you go in the house?" Jo shoots me one of her infamous glares and kneels down in front of Lyla. "Go in the house and turn on the TV. I'll be in there in a minute." She puts her hands on Lyla's arms and smiles at her. Lyla looks like she's scared or worried, maybe. "It's alright baby. Me and daddy just have to talk about something…something that little Lyla ears can't hear. Okay? Just go turn on the TV. Everything's fine." Ly nods her head and does what Jo says. She goes into the house, closes the front door and that's the last I see of her. "Real nice, Alex…why don't you just teach her how to say 'fuck'? Use it in a sentence, tell her the parts of speech…" Her tone is high pitched and ravaged with sarcasm as she peels off the yellow gloves she's wearing and tosses them in the trash too. "I don't have an issue. If you're sick of me cracking jokes about your little girlfriend then that's just too bad. Because it's either me crack jokes about the fact that I had to scrub her number off your hand or me get pissed off about the fact that I had to scrub her number off your hand. I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at the fact." She storms over to the steps and sits down on them. "…Why didn't you wash her number off your hand? Did you just not care? Or did you want me to see it so you could explain? What was your logic behind that because I'm still trying to understand..."

"First of all, it was DAYS ago, Jo. It happened on Thursday. It's Sunday now, when are you going to get the hell over it?" I sit down next to her and sigh. "Second of all, it was so unimportant that I literally forgot. I forgot that she flirted with me. I didn't even know her name, Jo. I don't look at women like that. The only one I look at is you. You're the only person I want. Any other girl can take a hike." She clenches her jaw and keeps her head forward, staring blankly out into the street. "And yeah…I left it on there because I didn't have anything to hide. I didn't have anything to hide from you so I had no reason to wash it off before you saw it. I wasn't hiding anything."

"You want me to get over it but Alex, I kind of can't. I mean, I've got you asking me to go on field trips with Lyla…which means I have to sit around knowing that one of those women tried to steal my boyfriend. And then magically, I'm supposed to just be cool with all of that? I'm supposed to just get over it? And no, I'm not gonna…beat her up or anything, I'm not immature and I'm not a little kid and I do realize that your daughter…our daughter…whatever Lyla is…she has to go to school there no matter what so of course I'm not going to make a scene. But I can't…do nothing? I can't sit here and do nothing knowing that she wants you. You don't see it the way I'm seeing it. You see it as 'all she did was flirt and give me her number' but I'm seeing it as okay, this time she flirted and this time she only gave you her number. But what if next time, she wraps her lips around you? What if next time she touches your ass, or grabs your dick or flashes you her tit? Then what? I'm supposed to forgive that too? No, Alex. I'm nipping this in the bud before it escalates and I'm going to let her know that you're taken by a crazy bitch that WILL kick an ass if I need to. I'm not going to kick her ass but I WILL kick her ass if she doesn't leave you alone. You want me to get over it, but how could I when I have to look her in her eye if I drop Lyla off or go on this damn trip? I'll go on the trip, sure. But I'm going let her know that I didn't appreciate coming home and finding her number on your hand."

"But Jo, you should trust that I'm not going to let any of that happen. I'm not going to let a woman grope me or kiss me. I'm not going to let that happen. You should trust me. It all comes down to the fact that you don't trust me."

"Oh my god, Alex. Seriously? Did everything I just said fly over your head?" She throws her head back, rubs her eyes hard and grunts like she's really frustrated with me at the moment. "If she ran up to you and kissed you, how the hell could you prevent that? If she came out of nowhere and squeezed your ass, what could you do to stop her? Nothing. It's not you that I don't trust, it's her! I already know you're not going anywhere. If you wanted to leave me, you would've done it already with all the ass that gets thrown your way on a daily basis. I already know you're not going anywhere; I'm not in danger of losing you. It's her that I don't trust. That'd be like me walking down the street and having some random dude run up and squeeze my boob…and then telling you to let it go because you don't trust me. There's no correlation between what I'm saying and me trusting you. No correlation at all."

"I get what you're saying." I sigh. "But Jo, don't make a spectacle of yourself. It's really not a big deal what she did. She flirted, gave me her number and that's it. Don't make a spectacle of yourself and don't be rude. Just keep in mind that I'm what she wants and you've already got me. Just remember that."

"Alex, I know how to be an adult. I'm not going to cuss her out, get defensive or snap. I'll be a mature adult about it." She rolls her eyes and shakes her head at me. "…You should've told her though. You should've been like 'I'm happily taken. I'm in a relationship and I'm happy'. She would've taken it better if it had come from you. Now I'm about to look like the desperate girl that has to beat a tramp off her boyfriend. Why didn't you just tell her? Why didn't you just say 'I'm flattered but I have a girl'?"

"Jesus Christ, Jo…my goodness, you're driving me crazy lately." I bury my face in my hands and do one of those same frustrated grunts that she just did a moment ago. She's been driving me up a tree lately. I love her to death but my god, she's driving me crazy with her neediness and jealousy. There are some parts of me that likes it when she gets jealous because to me, it just shows that she cares enough about me to get jealous sometimes but she's taking it overboard. "I don't know what you want from me but you're making me crazy. You're seriously driving me insane, woman. What do you want from me?" I pick my head up and look at her. She has a smirk on her face like she thinks something about this is funny so I can't help but smirk too. "I hate you." I shake my head at her and lean in for a kiss. She licks her lips and leans in too. Our lips touch for a moment before I pull away. "Is that what you wanted? All that hoopla for a kiss?" She flashes her teeth through her smile and nods her head. She drives me crazy but I'm crazy about her. I kiss her again, longer this time and pull back with a grin. "You believe me now?" I kiss the corner of her lips. "There's nobody…in this WORLD that I want more than I want you."

"Yeah?" Her eyes are all narrowed, her smile is slight and flirty, the tone of her voice is sultry and I can't resist her. She drives me so crazy…in more ways than one. I can't resist how perfect she is. I just lean in and give her another kiss, harder this time and deeper with tongue involved. She puts her hand to my cheek and holds my face still. Just as I'm about to get really into the kiss, she pulls away and leaves me hanging. "You want me?" She keeps that flirty tone in her voice and I can literally feel myself falling deeper in love with her. Everything Jo does makes me fall in love. Everything about her…god. "Nobody else, right? Just me?" She leans in and our noses are touching but our lips are not.

"Just you…" I murmur, trying to contain the fact that I want to lay her down on this porch right now and show her just how much I want her. I put my lips against hers and release all my pent-up frustration through this kiss. She kisses me back with the same intensity that I'm kissing her with and puts her hands down on my waist to brace herself. We're outside…on the porch…and my kid is awake. But I can't help myself. I really need her so bad right now. I put my hands on her waist too and slip them up underneath her t-shirt. Never breaking the kiss, I graze the tips of my fingers along the rim of the shorts she's wearing first before I stick both my hands down in them. Her legs are firmly closed so I can't get between them the way I want to. I pull out of the kiss for a split second. "Lemme in…" I go right back to kissing her lips.

She pulls away from me too. "Later." I reluctantly open my eyes, realizing that the moment of passion we were just having is unfortunately over. "I promise, later." She strokes my hair back and stands up. "This is bad timing." She winks at me and picks up the trash bag again so she can tie it. "And yeah…I'll chaperone the stupid trip on Friday." I sit back on the porch and just stare at her. How can someone wearing baggy, bummy clothes still look like a model? She looks like she just stepped out of a magazine and that's so crazy because she's the definition of a bum right now. She has her hair pulled back in a lazy, sloppy ponytail but it still looks like she's making a fashion statement. Damn, my girl is beautiful. "Are you gonna help me or what?" She looks at me.

"Yeah…" I stop staring at her and stand up. As I grab the trash bag she's holding and start tying it up, she raises her hand and waves at someone across the street. I wrinkle my brow and take a look at who she's waving at. She's waving at Mrs. Jensen and Mrs. Jensen is waving back, smiling widely like she and Jo are long lost best friends or something. But last time I checked, they hate each other…or so I thought. "What's all that about? Thought you didn't like her?" I carry the trash bags over to the gate so I can set them on the curb for the street crew to pick them up.

She stops waving when Mrs. Jensen disappears into her house. She slings her arm across her body and grabs onto her other arm, mindlessly rubbing where the scabs of the brush burn on her elbow used to be. "…First impressions are often wrong." She whispers to me.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

Alex is starting to piss me off with the way he keeps volunteering me for things when he doesn't feel like doing them himself. I don't know what the hell made him think that I would want to spend the entire day with a bunch of crumb-snatchers at Disney On Ice. I might be losing my mind here, but I could've swore that Lyla asked DADDY to chaperone the trip. Nowhere did she say MOMMY or JOJO. Alex didn't feel like coming and watching characters in costumes skate around and somehow he thought I would? And he had Lyla ask me, which was the worst part. He knows I can't say no to Lyla…especially when I really didn't have a good excuse not to come. My only excuse would be "I don't feel like it" and that's the truth. Alex didn't feel like it either, but he also had work as an excuse…which is a load of crap because he has the most flexible boss in the world and if he really wanted to appease his daughter, he could've easily taken a day off. He just didn't want to go and he used that as an excuse.

On the bright side, there are so many chaperones that I didn't get assigned to an extra kid. There are only four mothers that were given two children to look after and lucky me, I get to stick with my one. I would've been super pissed if they would've given me an extra child considering the fact that I don't even want to be here with my own. On the downside, Bethany didn't chaperone. She didn't chaperone and she didn't show her face at the school this morning before we got on the buses to go. She sent her kid with the mom named Amy, so I've overheard. I'll catch her someday. I don't care if it's today, tomorrow or next week…I'm going to have a word with that woman. I'll be polite about it. I'll probably just be like "I'm Alex's girlfriend and I'm flattered that you think he's attractive but please don't hit on him again". I'll be nice about it…the first time. If it happens a second time, I might have to drag her out in the parking lot and give her a beat down. I haven't been in a fist fight since I was like fifteen or sixteen but I think I've still got it. I could handle an old woman if I needed to. I don't want to fight her…I really think I'm way too old to be out in the street throwing down with a woman, but I will. I don't want to fight but I will if she doesn't leave Alex alone. I'm not the jealous type. I never have been and I probably never will be, but I don't like it when people try and take things that are mine. It's not a matter of me being jealous of another woman or anything; it's a matter of a woman being bold enough to think that she can take what's mine. I'm not jealous nor am I insecure about losing Alex. I know Alex isn't going anywhere. And if I did fight her, it wouldn't be me fighting over a man. It'd be me fighting a woman because she's disrespectful enough towards me to think that she can mess with what's clearly mine. I just think it's so disrespectful towards me for her to know that he's in a relationship with a woman that she's SEEN MORE THAN ONCE and she still hits on him. It wouldn't be me fighting over Alex because that woman couldn't take Alex off me in a million years—it would be me fighting because she did something over-the-top disrespectful towards me.

"Mommy…Mommy, can I have one of those?" Lyla pulls on the edge of my t-shirt and points to this toy that's lighting up and spinning around at the souvenir table. "Please?" Alex gave me $70 for spending money while we're here but just because he gave me $70 doesn't mean that I want to use all of it. I'd like to bring him change and something tells me that those little light up toys are probably expensive as heck. I already spent $30 on our lunch during the first intermission…and all we were supposed to be doing here is using the bathroom. Am I really about to let her con me into buying her a toy? "Please, mommy?!" I look down at her and I made the biggest mistake by doing that. She's looking up at me with bright green, begging eyes and her lip is all poked out. She's been so good today too. She sat still on the entire bus ride here and she talked to her friend Kinsey that sat in the seat in front of us. She hasn't ran off or shouted or acted bratty like most of the kids and she didn't even pitch a fit when she couldn't sit next to Kinsey during the show. She ate all her chicken fingers and french fries and she didn't throw a fit when I told her no cotton candy because she already had Dippin' Dots. I suck my teeth and drag my feet over to the souvenir table. "Thank you!" She runs to the toys and plucks one out of the plastic holders that they're displayed in. She pushes the button on the toy and in the middle, Cinderella and Prince Charming start spinning around while the lights spin around.

"How much for that?" I ask the vendor as I reach in my back pocket for the rest of the money.

"$22.75." She presses buttons on her register.

"Here you go." I hand her a twenty dollar bill and three one dollar bills. "Keep the change." I smile at her and turn back around. "Alright, let's go sit back down before we miss Ariel and Sleeping Beauty." I grab her hand while she keeps pushing the button on her toy and start walking back towards the entrance that leads to our seats. I give that toy until the bus ride home before it loses it's battery power. She's going to wear it out. The indoor stadium that the show takes place in is already dimming the lights for the show to resume so since I know that she's going to cry if we miss any parts of the show, I hoist her up on my hip and start walking down the flight of steps to row H, where our seats are located at. I really didn't want to come here but I have to admit that the show's been pretty cute so far. I would still rather be at home right now than here with a bunch of little kids and their overbearing, tramp mothers but it wasn't a waste of money coming here. When we first got here, I thought it was going to be a bit girly because the first show that came out was Cinderella and it was all princessy and girly and whatnot but as the show went on, we started seeing Captain Hook, Sleeping Beauty's prince and Mulan's boyfriend and it added some fun for the boys. The theme is "Princesses and Heroes" and it's a really cute little show. I reach our seats and sit back down.

The entire time, I've been sitting next to the little cutie I saw the one day I picked her up. The cutie with the brown skin and curly hair? I've been sitting beside him but this time when I sit down, I'm sitting beside his mother and that's when I realize that his mother is that one woman I admired that day. I admired her because she was able to just drop her son off and be on her way without even engaging in small talk with the mothers that I was thrust into talking to. It doesn't surprise me that her little boy is very well-behaved because she looks like she just has it all together. She has a mound of curly hair on top of her head and black glasses on her face. She's holding her son on her lap and bouncing him up and down to keep him entertained. "Mommy...I can't see!" Lyla starts standing up on her seat.

"No, don't! Don't do that, Lyla!" I grab her arms and carefully help her to sit back down. "Come sit on my lap if you can't see, you don't stand up. You're gonna fall and hurt yourself. Don't stand on the seat." I sit all the way back in my seat with my feet neatly on the ground and I pull her over so she's sitting on my lap. "There…is that better?" She nods her head and leans back against my chest, sucking her thumb and just watching as Sleeping Beauty's prince comes galloping out on a horse. I press my lips to her cheek and stroke her hair back. I think she's sleepy but she won't admit it. I suspect that she'll fall asleep on the bus ride home. She didn't sleep last night because she was too excited to come here today. "You see Maleficent?" I point over towards the shadowy corner at the black figure that's emerging. "You see her?" Lyla nods her head and hands me her toy so she can watch the show properly. I take the toy and put it on the armrest that divides the two chairs between me and the curly haired mom. From the corner of my eye, I watch the little boy pick up Lyla's toy from the armrest.

"No, Quent…that's not yours." The little boy's mother grabs the toy off of him and turns towards me. "Here you go…my son's trying to steal your daughter's toy. I told him about taking things that aren't his and he just doesn't listen…sorry about that."

"He can play with it…can't he, Ly?" I nudge Lyla. She looks over at the little boy for a second, nods and continues watching the show. "Here you go, sweetie." I hand the toy back to the little boy. "You can play with it." The little boy takes the toy back off of me, smiling and showing off his crooked, spaced-out teeth and dear god he's so cute. He's got the little glasses on like his mom, his hair is cut into a Mohawk that's short on the sides and curly in the middle and he has chubby cheeks. He's so cute.

"What do you say, Quentin?" His mother nudges him and speaks with a firm, "I mean business" kind of tone in her voice. "Tell her thank you. Tell your friend's mom thank you." The way she talks, I can tell that she's not like the rest of the moms. For one, I'm pretty sure that she's my age. She can't be any older than 30. And for two, she's not like the moms that think their kids are the most perfect angels in the class. I like her.

"Fank you." The little boy spits out and starts pressing the button on Lyla's toy.

"You're welcome honey." I can't help but smile at him. "He's really cute…his name's Quentin?"

"Thank you. And yep…Quentin Cadence…after his dad." She rubs her son's curly hair and kisses the top of his head. "Your daughter's no slacker herself. My husband and I talk about her all the time when we pick him up…" I wrinkle my brow slightly. "Not in a bad way! Totally not in a bad way…we just think she's always dressed so cute and her hair is always done up all cute. She's a little baby doll. We always tease Quent about how he has a crush on the little girl named Jewel…we tell him…" She bites her lip. "We tell him…if he's gonna have a crush on any girl in the class, he's gotta make it your daughter because Jewel's not…cute."

I hold back laughter for fear of disrupting Lyla while she watches the show. Jewel is the little girl with bright orange hair and freckles all over her face. I don't think she's that bad looking but she's definitely not the prettiest little girl in the class. Of course, I'm slightly biased considering the fact that I'm 99% sure that the prettiest little girl in the class is sitting here on my lap, but still. "Thank you." I stroke Lyla's hair again. "I try so hard every day to make sure she looks nice when she walks out the house."

"Well you do a very good job. Her outfits are always super adorable and she's a really pretty little girl." She reaches over and in a very motherly fashion, she touches one of the bouncy curls I put in Lyla's hair this morning. "…Stephanie Edwards, by the way."

"Jo Wilson." I introduce myself by shaking her hand.

 **X X X**

"It was fun." With Lyla on my hip and laying down on my shoulder, I make my way to the living room so I can lay her down. I already knew that she was going to fall asleep on the bus ride home and I was right. About fifteen minutes into the ride, she was out like a light on my chest so I just sat and talked to my new friend Steph. I was right about Stephanie too. She's 28 years old and she's a stay at home mom while she goes to school to be a nurse. Her husband is a Geneticist at Pensacola Mercy Hospital and he makes decent money but she's working to go back to school because they struggle. Quentin is her only child and she had him when she was 24 and in nursing school the first time. She dropped out to take care of him and now she's going back. I really like her. I relate to her pretty well. It's too bad that Quentin and Lyla could give a rat's ass about each other because I'd like to have play dates for the two of them just so Stephanie and I could talk more. "It was a really cute little show…I actually enjoyed myself." I keep talking to Alex, who's in the kitchen starting dinner. I lay Lyla down on the couch and pull a blanket over her. I plant a kiss on her forehead and go back to the kitchen. "I brought you change too…like twenty bucks."

"Keep it." He pours some olive oil into a frying pan and starts laying a pork chop in it. "I'm glad you had fun though…glad I didn't have to go, but glad you had fun."

"Yep…and I made a friend." I lean against the counter and sigh. "Her name's Stephanie. She's my age and her little boy is the cutest thing in the world."

"That's good…good." He lays two more pork chops in the grease and turns around. "I'm glad you had fun and I'm glad you met someone." He puts his arms around my waist. "I missed you though. Thought about you all day…missed you like crazy." He kisses my cheek. I actually missed him too. "You good with pork chops…green beans and macaroni for dinner? I had a taste for all three…don't know if they go together, but had a taste for 'em nonetheless."

"They go together. Put some biscuits in the oven too though. There's gotta be some kind of bread to go with it." I raise up on my tiptoes and kiss him on his lips. "I'll be back. I gotta go pee." I rub his butt in a circle and turn to leave. I tiptoe past Lyla so I don't wake her up and disappear into the downstairs bathroom. I close the door behind myself and turn on the light. As soon as I turn the light on, I see that the toilet seat is up and there's piss all over the back of it. "AAAAA—" I start to yell his name but I remember that Lyla is sleeping and I guess I'm going to have to settle for yelling at him about it when I'm done in here. Irritated, I fling open the cabinet underneath the sink and search for the cleaning spray. I hate it so much when he leaves the toilet seat up but I hate it even more when he pisses all over the back of the toilet and doesn't clean it. God, that makes me want to beat the hell out of him. He's so disgusting sometimes! I can deal with him leaving his dirty underwear laying around. I don't get irritated when I have to clean his facial hair out of the sink after he shaves. I can even take the way he leaves the door open while he's taking a crap. But I cannot STAND IT when he pees all over the seat and doesn't clean it up. Oh, that really grinds my gears. "Freaking…men." I mumble to myself, pushing a package of toilet paper out of my way and sliding past the container of powdered Comet cleaner. I slap a box of tampons out of my way so I can grab the bleach spray but the tampons spill out and end up all over the place. This is practically a brand new box…only one is missing. And then it dawns on me…

I haven't used tampons in a while.

* * *

 **A/N:** so just yesterday, i had another interesting idea for my next story. i just want to know which you guys would prefer though. for my next story, are you guys tired of completely AUs? would you prefer a story that alex and jo are doctors? or do you like the completely AUs? or would you like somewhat AU and somewhat like the show? Just let me know what you'd like.


	64. Why Not?

I pull the cap off the top of the blender and dump the entire package of Oreos into it. When my mom used to make dirt for me when I was little, we never had a blender because we couldn't afford one, so she'd have to crush the Oreos up by hand. She would always let me help her do it, too. I used to feel like such a big, important helper while I'd sit on the counter and help my mom crush up cookies and I always knew that somewhere down the line when I had kids of my own, I would want them to help me crush up Oreos for dirt someday. Isn't it funny how memory works? I can hardly remember what I cooked for dinner yesterday but I can surely remember all the times my mom sat me up on the counter and let me smack my hands down on a Ziploc baggie full of cookies. I think I remember things like this maybe because when I was younger, cooking was really the only thing my mom and I ever did together. We couldn't afford to do typical mother-daughter things, like go out to dinner and do the movies and get our hair and nails done. So our version of quality time together usually involved me sitting on the counter and her giving me simple, minuscule tasks to do that made little ten year old me feel so important. If Lyla were here right now, I probably wouldn't use the blender. I'd probably put her on the counter like my mom used to and I'd let her smash the Oreos by hand. But she's not here, she's at school, Alex is at work, I'm here alone and I just want to get done with this stuff so I can take a nap before I have to go pick her up.

I've been running around all morning. I ran to the store to pick up the stuff to make this dirt, I ran up to Pensacola to turn in a copy of my teaching certificate so I can officially start this job next week and I had to run to the Fun Party store to see if I could find a costume for myself since I just found out this morning that I have to dress up for this damn Halloween party tomorrow. I was just going to grab a witch's hat and maybe a skirt and call it a day. I wasn't planning on dressing up at all considering the last time I dressed up for Halloween, I was a bumblebee and I was like six years old. I always wanted to dress up and beg for candy but trick or treating when you spent most of your childhood living in a shelter was kind of a bummer. So my mom usually just bought me a small bag of assorted candy at the dollar store and we'd lay in the bed together, eating candy and watching scary movies for Halloween. Anyway, I thought that I should match Lyla's Disney theme and I was going to just grab a pair of Minnie Mouse ears and paint some whiskers on my face tomorrow morning with eyeliner, but I saw a headband with floppy Dalmatian ears hanging on the shelf and I had to grab them. I'm going to be a dog instead. If I feel like dressing up tomorrow morning, I might put on a pair of black jeans and a white t-shirt, but if I don't feel like it, I'm just going to throw on sweatpants, the ears and call it a day. I suspect that I'll be wearing the sweats anyway, because I'm going to have a hard enough time trying to get Lyla's hair right. Apparently the kids are having a "best costume" contest and she really wants to win, so she went pretty original with her costume idea.

We went costume shopping last weekend and as soon as we walked into the costume store, there was a blue and silver Elsa costume, complete with the platinum blonde wig fishtail braid and everything and I thought for sure she was going to be Elsa. I started to pick up the costume and everything. But she told me no. She told me that Kinsey and Jewel are both going to be Elsa and she didn't want to have the same costume as them. So we looked around and we tried Jessie the cowgirl from Toy Story, Boo from Monster's Inc., Anna from Frozen, Pocahontas, Vanellope Von Schweetz from Wreck-It Ralph and eventually, she settled on Cruella Deville. She has the whole nine too. The original costume only came with the black dress, the red gloves, the cigarette holder and the Dalmatian spotted shawl, so I took her to Justice and found her the plush white robe, a pair of black stockings and red mini high heels. I was so surprised that she actually went for something like Cruella Deville because she's not really into the whole villain thing. But she came up with it on her own. She saw the costume and said "I wanna be her". I'll admit, I was a little bit bummed. I wanted to see her go as Vanellope Von Schweetz, I thought that would be super cute—but I can make her look super cute as Cruella Deville with a little bit of my makeup.

I clasp the lid back on the blender and hold the button down until the Oreos are chopped finely and actually look like dirt. When I told Alex I was making dirt, he looked at me like I was nuts. It never occurred to me that maybe dirt is only something that Terri Wilson made. I thought everybody knew what dirt was but I guess not. All I did was chop up Oreos really fine and line the bottom of a flower pot with it. I mixed some chunks of Oreos into chocolate pudding, mixed some whipped cream into it as well and dumped it into the flower pot. And now I'm going to put more finely chopped Oreo crumbs on the top, complete with gummy worms on top and candy pumpkins. I made sand too, which is the same thing, but only with vanilla Oreos and vanilla pudding. I put Sweedish Fish on top of that and those little gummy sharks and I put that in a sand pail as opposed to a flower pot. I'll never freely admit this to anyone…and I'd deny it if I was ever asked…but I kind of liked decorating the little flower pot and sand pail. I'm not excited for the fact that I actually have to go to this stupid party tomorrow, but I did have fun making the food for it.

I pick up the spoon I've been using to spread the Oreos around and overturn the blender. I scrape the Oreos out of the blender and spread them around the top of the flower pot with the spoon. Once it's all pretty much covered, I tear open the bag of gummy worms and start pushing them down inside the actual mixture so it looks like they're coming up out of the dirt. I lay a few on top and toss the empty bag away. I open up the bag of candy pumpkins and just drop them here and there and finally, I'm done. I dump all the dishes in the sink for me to wash later and open up the fridge so I can put the flower pot next to the sand bucket and close the fridge so they can get cold for tomorrow. I turn off the kitchen light and head for the couch since I'm way too lazy to walk upstairs. I flop down on the couch, stick my cell phone on the coffee table, turn on the TV and lay down. I reach up and pull the blanket resting on the back of the couch over my body, use one of the couch pillows to lay on and start mindlessly scrolling through channels to find something that I can watch until I fall asleep. All I've been wanting to do lately is sleep. I'm always tired anymore. For the last three or so weeks, I've just wanted to sleep nonstop. All I think about is sleeping. I've been so tired that I literally delayed starting the teaching job for a few weeks. The school board up at Pensacola High School really wants me and they've been hanging in there with me but if I don't start soon, I don't think they're going to hold my position anymore. They asked me when I was willing to start and at first, I told them ASAP. But they asked again a couple weeks ago when I'd be willing to start again and I told them in a few weeks…and I've just been pushing it back and pushing it back all because I'm too tired to even think about anything other than laying down.

I've been putting off a lot of things though. I've been putting off the start of my job, I've been putting off talking to Alex about something I should probably really talk to him about, I've been putting off talking to ANYBODY about something I should really talk about and I've even been putting off scheduling a doctor's appointment to check out what I really should get checked out. I'm just too tired and I don't feel like it though. I don't feel like doing anything at all anymore for one and for two, I don't think it's a big deal. I mean, I still haven't had to crack open a single tampon and it's been…maybe two months since I've had to use one? I don't know. But I think it's just my period acting up due to the fact that I am so messed up on the inside. I've only gained two pounds recently, I haven't been throwing up at all, my stomach is still just as flat as it's ever been and I don't even feel like I could be pregnant. The only thing that's different about me is that I'm tired but it's probably because I get up at the crack of dawn every day, pack Lyla's lunch, get her off to school and run errands. Any person in their right mind would be tired if they did that on a day to day basis. I just feel like…if I was pregnant, wouldn't I have symptoms? Other than the fact that I haven't had a period in two months, I mean. My last period was at the end of August. I went through all of September and tomorrow, it'll be all of October without a period. Maybe that should worry me, but it doesn't because I have no other symptoms. I'm not nauseous, I'm not gaining weight, I don't have to pee all the time and I don't feel like something is in my womb. I'd be concerned if there were other symptoms but there's not.

If I was pregnant…I think innocence is bliss. I haven't taken a test and I haven't been to the doctors so I don't really know for sure but in this particular situation, I think ignorance is bliss. I don't want to know if I am and I don't want to know if I'm not. There are about…five million different reasons why a baby would be the worst possible thing right now. For one, Alex and I are just now starting to really understand each other and move forward in our relationship. We've only been together for almost four months and there's no way that either one of us are ready to throw a baby in the mix. A baby right now wouldn't do any good to us. A baby right now would just force us to stay together even if we don't want to be together and I don't want my relationship to be like that. Things between me and Alex moved at the speed of light at first and now that we're finally starting to settle things down and take it slow, a baby might be involved? No. Secondly, if I get all attached to a baby, I'm going to be hurt in the end because I'm just going to lose it. I can't carry a baby. It's not a matter of if I can push out and deliver a baby, it's a matter of the fact that I'm not equipped to handle a baby from the inside. I'm missing a piece of my uterus, my cervix is too weak to hold up under the pressure of carrying a baby and it's more than a 90% chance that I'll miscarry because my cervix can't stay closed off enough to keep a baby inside. I can't lose another baby. Not mentally or emotionally. Thirdly, Alex doesn't want kids. He said himself that he doesn't want any more kids and I really don't want him to think that I've trapped him. Let's say that I was pregnant…he can still leave. He doesn't have to feel like he's bound to me for the rest of his life. He doesn't want any more kids and as a woman, I respect that. I respect that he wouldn't want my baby if I was pregnant. Fourthly, I'm trying to get a job. I wouldn't allow myself to get a job when I know that in nine months, I'm going to have to take a maternity leave. That'd be kind of pointless. Fifthly, we're not even married. We haven't even talked about getting married and to be honest, I've hardly even thought about getting married to him. Right now, I'd like to marry him but who's to say a few years down the line more into our relationship, we don't hate each other? We haven't even talked about marriage and that's the way it should be. We shouldn't be four months into our relationship discussing marriage and babies already. Personally, I don't think it was too soon for me to tell him that I loved him because I do. I love Alex with all my heart and when you fall in love with somebody, it can happen quickly or it can happen slowly. It's different for everyone and for two people that are extremely compatible like Alex and I are, it can happen quickly. But I still don't think I have any business living here. We definitely moved in together way too soon. That went too quickly. But now…I'm suddenly faced with the idea of having a baby with this man and I don't even know…if we're going to get married? A baby would screw everything up. Everything that we worked for would go down the drain.

I always thought that I wanted a baby. I always thought that a baby would make me happy and fill the void in my heart that the one I lost left. I always thought that I wanted a replacement for Gabby but it's…pointless now. I'm perfectly fine with the way my life is going right now and throwing a baby in the mix would just change everything. It would change the way me and Alex's relationship is, it would change how we interact and it would just change my entire life and I don't want my life to change anymore. I don't want a baby anymore. I don't want things between me and Alex to change, I don't want to have to put off working to take care of a baby, I don't want to have to put off school because I have to take care of a baby and I just don't want my life to change again when I'm finally finding some consistency. I don't want a baby. I want things to stay as they are right now and I do not want to be pregnant. It's been in the back of my mind ever since I came back from Lyla's field trip in September. I haven't really thought about it but it's always there. It's always in the back of my mind. I'll ignore it and focus on other things that are more important, but it's always there. I don't think I am but if I am, I don't want to know. I don't want to know because I'm probably going to miscarry anyway and I'd rather just think the miscarriage is my period or something. I don't want to go to the bathroom one day, bleed and realize that it's my baby. I just don't want to know at all. If I am and it's meant to be then I'm guessing that I'll know for sure in about…two more months when I can't fit into my jeans anymore. But as for right now? I'm just going to let it go. Whatever if I am, whatever if I'm not. I'm not interested in having a baby and…I don't know, maybe it'll just go away. If I ignore it until I can't ignore it anymore…whatever.

Just as I turn to bury my face in the pillow so I can fall asleep for my nap, my phone starts to buzz against the coffee table. I sigh hard, reach out and snatch it up. The caller ID says "ma", so swipe my finger across the screen, hold the phone to my ear and begrudgingly, I answer it. "Hullo?" I mumble.

"Hey Moe…what's up?" She sounds all bouncy and cheerful which annoys the crap out of me.

"Nothing…trying to take a nap. What do you want?"

"Nothing…just checking on you. Seeing how you're doing." She coughs. "Did you start your job yet?"

"No."

"…Jo, what's wrong? Honey, are you sick? What's going on?"

"Huh? No…I'm fine, mom. I'm just tired, that's all. Why's there have to be something wrong if I'm tired?"

"I'm just asking. You don't sound like yourself, that's all. I haven't talked to you in a while and I was just wondering how things were going down there but if you want to go lie down then I guess I'll just talk to you later."

"No mom, it's fine…we can talk. We can talk." I stop her from hanging up only because I don't want to feel guilty and if I let her hang up right now, that's exactly what's going to happen. I'm going to feel guilty for not being able to talk to her and it's going to kill me for the rest of the day. "…How are things with you and your man?"

"We're okay…we're fine. You and Alex? Anything cool, new or exciting? How's that baby?"

I feel like someone just dumped cold water all over me. "What baby?" How does she know? I didn't tell ANYBODY that I think I could be pregnant!

"Lyla…how is she?"

"Oh." I calm down. "She's good…she's hanging in there." I yawn hard into the receiver and groan with it.

"Jo, go to sleep. I'll call you back later, it's fine. You sound so tired. Go to sleep." She's starting to sound like a mother.

"Mom, I'm alright. We can continue to talk. You called me, I'm not gonna be rude." I yawn again and I hear her sigh. I guess…I guess I don't really want to deal with this alone. I've been dealing with it alone for an entire month and it sucks that I'm not able to turn to someone. It sucks that I feel like I'm walking around with some big huge secret. Especially when it comes to Alex. That day, when I started thinking that I might be, I went right back into the kitchen and I started to tell him that I haven't had my period yet that month. But when I looked at him standing there cooking dinner, I started thinking. A baby would change everything between us. The whole dynamic of our relationship would be turned upside down and we'd be forced to be parents with one another. I mean, we're already parents with Lyla sure, but it's different. If we had a baby together…it would just change everything. I started thinking about how content I was with everything in that moment and how a baby in the middle would screw everything up. And then I started thinking about how he told me that he didn't want any more children. And I just couldn't tell him...especially if I wasn't even sure if was or not. I don't want to worry him unless there's a legit reason to worry. But I've been walking around with a big secret and it's not that big of a deal for me to cope with it alone but I guess it wouldn't hurt to tell someone. "Mommy…if I tell you something…you promise you'll keep it a secret?"

"Don't I always, Jo?"

"No, but I'm serious this time. This really needs to be kept a secret. You can't tell anybody about this if I tell you. I'm so serious. This has to be kept a secret. So if I tell you…you can't tell ANYBODY. And don't repeat it after this conversation and don't text me about it, don't ask me about it, don't say anything. Just listen, take it in and say nothing. Got it?"

"I got it, Moe. What is it?"

"I think I'm pregnant." I mumble in a whisper. I'm honestly ashamed to admit it to her. She told me…she kept saying it over and over and I kept reassuring her that it wasn't going to happen because for so long, I was told that it can't happen. So I just didn't think that it would. I trusted the doctors and I didn't think that it was going to happen so I just dismissed her and told her that I wasn't going to get pregnant and here I am…telling her that I think I am. I'm so ashamed of myself. We had sex. Lots and lots and lots of unprotected, dirty, rough, nut-busting sex and what do you know? She told me to use condoms… I should've listened to my mom. She's dead silent on the other end of the phone. "I haven't had a period in like…two months. But you know, the doctors always said that my period could get all screwy because of the accident but two months…I'm not nauseous and puking, I'm not gaining weight and I don't feel any different but…two months, mom…"

"…How sure are you? Did you take a pregnancy test? Did you go see a doctor? Are you just going off of the fact that you haven't had a period in a while?"

"Yeah. I mean, no…I haven't seen anybody about it because…I mean, it's 50/50. I could be but I don't have to be. There could be a bunch of reasons why my period is out of whack, right? I could be stressed, my thyroid could be acting up, I could have a cyst in my ovary…you know, like they found traces of cysts in the one they removed…could be premature menopause. It could be a bunch of other things besides pregnancy but I mean…it's no secret that me and Alex go at it like rabbits. And I could be."

"So you need to take a test then, Jo. You need to take a test, you need to find out for sure and you need to tell Alex that you could be pregnant. You're going to be 30 years old and you're still thinking like a damn teenager, Josephine. You can't walk around hiding the fact that you could be expecting that man's baby all because you're a scared, stressed out mess. I told you to use condoms. I told you to be more careful and this is what happens when you're not. You need to get off your ass, take it down to the drugstore—"

"I didn't mean to make you m-mad." My jaw trembles. Why is it that my mom is the only person on this Earth that singlehandedly holds the power to make me cry at the drop of a hat? I don't cry easily and I don't cry for no reason. But when the possibility that I might've disappointed my mom creeps into my mind, I automatically tear up. She can make me cry so easily with only a few words. "I'm just...I didn't think it would happen."

"I'm not mad at you, Jo. I'm not mad at you and I'm not disappointed in you. I already know that's what you're thinking and that's not true. I'm not angry with you and I'm not disappointed. I just wish you'd put your head on straight. You can act like a real ditz sometimes. You really think that if you ignore this, it's going to go away? You haven't had a period in two months Jo…which means you're probably THREE months pregnant if you are. You need proper medical attention and you're sitting on your ass. You need to find out for sure if you're pregnant. And you're right…could be a number of things that messed your cycle up but you need to rule out pregnancy."

"I don't want to know though, mommy. I like…don't want to worry about it yet. I'm not gaining weight, I don't feel pregnant, I haven't thrown up…if I am, it'll come out in a few more months. Why can't I just worry about it then? And I'm probably gonna miscarry… I just don't want it to change anything. Like mom, I'm finally feeling good about everything. We have a nice routine with Lyla, I'm comfortable with being her stand-in mother, Alex and I are doing really well, I'm getting ready to start this new job, I'm going back to school in the middle of November and it's about to be a whole year since the accident and I'm finally feeling like I can….pick up the pieces. A baby would screw EVERYTHING up for me right now. I don't want one and Alex doesn't either. I want things to stay here, like they are for a while. I don't want to have babies with Alex until we're married if it's even possible for us TO have babies…I just want to marry him, you know? And after things went too fast, we're slowing down and this happens? Neither one of us want a baby."

"That's what happens when you have unprotected sex, Jo. You don't use condoms, you're not on birth control and you said yourself that he doesn't even bother pulling out. No doctor ever told you that you were sterile, they just told you that it was highly unlikely for you to get pregnant and once you were pregnant, it's also unlikely for you to carry that baby to term. If you're not ready for a baby, you should've taken proper steps to prevent it from happening. But you didn't and you could be pregnant right now and if you are, you and Alex BOTH need to buck up and accept this responsibility." I wipe away a tear that fell and sniff. "But you need to find out for sure. I know you can't carry a baby, Moe…but it doesn't mean that you can just ignore it. You need to find out if you're pregnant and more than that, you need to tell Alex that you could be. You can't keep him in the dark. How long have you suspected that you are? How long?"

"…Since September."

"My god, Jo. Really? NOW you're pissing me off. And you haven't done anything about it?" She sighs. "You need to find out for sure. I can't believe you waited this long."

"I don't want to know, mom! So I just…I got scared!"

"You better find out, Jo."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I slam my car door shut and hurry into the YMCA building, almost running. It's 3:45. It's fifteen minutes until 4:00. Lyla's done with school at 3:00 on the nose and it's 3:45 and she's still here. I jog down the hallway that leads to her classroom and try to calm myself down. Jo didn't pick her up. Jo's always here at 3:00 every day to pick her up and she didn't pick her up today. I don't know if I should be worried or pissed. Worried because Jo never, ever, ever misses picking Lyla up and if she can't pick her up, she ALWAYS calls me to tell me that she can't. Something must be wrong with Jo for her to forget to pick Ly up because she never does. She's a damn good mother to my daughter—she's here every day to pick her up and she drops her off every morning. But pissed off because SHE DIDN'T PICK LYLA UP. Lyla sat here for 45 minutes, waiting for someone to pick her up! I didn't get off until 3:30 today so can you guess how fast I had to push it up the highway? The preschool called me at 3:20 and said that it was 20 minutes past dismissal and Lyla hadn't been picked up. So Arizona let me off ten minutes early and I had to fly up the highway and pray that a cop wouldn't pull me over. I'm not mad at Jo because like I said, she wouldn't miss picking Ly up unless there was something seriously wrong with her but I can't believe she didn't pick her up.

"Sorry..." I say as soon as I step into the classroom. Lyla's sitting over at the tables coloring a picture. She's the only kid in the room, it's quiet as she's minding her own business and her teacher is off in the back getting things ready for the big Halloween party tomorrow. "Sorry I'm late. My girlfriend and I must've had a misunderstanding." I pick up Lyla's jacket and hold it open as her teacher walks over to us. "Come on, Ly…put your coat on."

"She wasn't a problem, Mr. Karev. She's very polite and very well-behaved." The teacher assures me. "I didn't mind sitting with her. We were going to have her bussed, but we didn't know where we should drop her off at so we just kept her. She wasn't an issue. She was quiet as a mouse; I hardly even noticed she was in here."

"Thank you for staying after…thank you." I help Ly put her coat on and I pick up her backpack and her lunchbox. "Come on, Ly. Tell your teacher you'll see her tomorrow." I pick her up and put her on my hip as she waves to her teacher.

"I'll see you at the party tomorrow, Lyla." Her teacher waves back and we disappear outside through the doors.

 **X X X**

"Jo?" I call her name as soon as I walk through the front door. I put Lyla down on the ground and shut the door behind the both of us. It's super quiet in the house. I put Lyla's bookbag and her lunchbox down on the table and walk over to the sink. This is a very strange day. Normally, Jo would've picked her up from school. And she would be in this kitchen, buzzing around and cooking dinner right now. There wouldn't be dishes in the sink like there currently are and it wouldn't be this quiet. "Jo?" I call her name again and walk towards the living room. The TV is on but it's so low that I think it's muted, there's a roll of paper towels on the floor next to the couch, a can of Pepsi is sitting on the coffee table right next to her cell phone and sure enough, she's on the couch. She's laying on the couch in a heap of clothes and blankets. She's on her stomach with both her arms rested up underneath the couch pillow that her head is laying on. She has a blanket over the lower half of her body and the upper half is covered by one of my baggy t-shirts. Her hair is in a ponytail that's so sloppy and lazy that it just droops over the side of the couch, dangles and almost touches the floor and she's snoring, which is weird because Jo NEVER snores. She's out like a light. "…Ly, go upstairs to your room. Daddy and Jojo need to talk." I didn't mean to call her "Jojo" again, it just slipped. Like a good girl, Ly goes right upstairs and doesn't even question anything. "Get up, Jo!" I rip the blankets off of her.

She groans and slowly, her eyes open. "Oh my god, what time is it?" Is the first thing she says. She was sleeping pretty hard, I can tell. She has a bright red sleep line on her cheek, her hair is sticking to one side of her head, and she seems pretty out of it. It's like she was just woken up from anesthesia or something. "Oh my god…" She mumbles.

"Yeah, oh my god is right! IT'S 4:00 IN THE DAMN AFTERNOON, JO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING SLEEPING?!" I grab her by her arm and help her up off the couch, even though she's clearly still pretty delirious. I wasn't mad at her…back when I thought that something was seriously wrong! She slept through picking Lyla up! In some ways, I'm glad because I thought I was gonna walk in here and find her half dead and lying on the floor, but I'm pissed! She's sleeping! Like she's in a drunken stupor, she's sleeping. "SHE SAT THERE FOR 45 MINUTES AND ALL YOU WERE DOING IS SLEEPING?! I SPED HOME FROM WORK!"

"Oh my god…" She stumbles backward and sits back down on the couch and rests her head in her hands. "Oh my god… oh my god." She whispers to herself in disbelief. "Oh my god. I'm so sorry, Alex…I…" She stands up again and looks around. "I must've lost track…"

"What the hell is the matter with you?" My anger is starting to die down because well…there still must be something wrong with her. She doesn't ever knock out in the middle of the day like that. She's been sleeping a lot lately.

"I'm just…so tired." She stumbles around, trying to get to the kitchen but I grab her arm and help her stand upright. "Alex, I think I'm…" She stumbles again like she's about to faint but I catch her. She needs water.

"Come on, you need something to drink…lemme get you something to drink." I hold her around her waist. She's been sleeping a lot lately and she's been so tired. Not only tired as in sleepy, but tired as in she just doesn't want to do anything. If I had to guess, I think she has mono. And if she does have mononucleosis, I need to take her to the hospital to make sure her spleen is okay. If she has mono…that means I have mono and Lyla probably has mono too. She had to have given it to me because I don't have mono as far as I know. "Do you have mono, Jo?"

"The kissing disease? No way." She shakes her head and pulls away from me. "I'm fine, Alex. I just think I'm…" She hazily walks over to the fridge.

"You think you're what?" I grab a cup out of the cabinet for her.

"…Just really exhausted."

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"You got it?" I bump the door closed with my hip and look down at her to make sure she's not going to drop the pail with the sand in it. She nods her head and struts with her little red high heels on. When I woke up this morning, I definitely wasn't feeling even coming here; let alone putting a costume on. But Lyla was so excited when I woke her up this morning. She was all happy and smiley and giggly and I couldn't ruin her day by refusing to dress up as a dog. I'm still so exhausted and mad at myself for yesterday. I went to bed last night at 10:00 in hopes that I would be alright enough to make it through today without wanting to lay down and pass out for a couple hours but nope. I feel like a zombie. I'm running on well over eight hours of sleep and I still feel like I'm dead. I can't believe I laid down and slept through picking her up yesterday too. I'm still not over that. I'm still mad at myself for that. I fell asleep at 12:00 after I got off the phone with my mom and I set the alarm on my phone to wake me up at 2:30. I slept right through it, I guess. Lyla had to stay afterschool and Alex had to get off work early to get her. I feel so bad about that but I literally don't know what happened. And I chickened out of telling him too. I was going to tell him, I really was. But I chickened out. "Oh wow, you're so strong for carrying that." I'm in a bad mood with myself right now but I'll never let that affect how I treat Lyla. I open the door up and hold it for her. She's a little professional in her high heels, she's so cute.

I think her costume actually turned out really cute. I would've liked to see her as Vanellope Von Schweetz, but I think Cruella Deville turned out pretty stinking adorable. I didn't feel like doing her makeup and hair this morning but once I started, I couldn't stop. She's wearing the tight black dress with the red belt around her waist. One of her stockings is white and the other is black, she has bright red gloves on her hands and her shoes are little red half-inch heels. She has the plush white fur robe over her black dress and the Dalmatian print shawl is draped over her shoulders. I put bright red lipstick on her, light blue eyeshadow and I even drew the little mole by her lips with my eyeliner. Her hair took the most time though. I had some white and black hair chalk and I sprayed one half of her hair black and the other half white and after lots of hairspray, lots of teasing and manipulating a black feather clip into her hair, she was complete and she looks adorable. Alex almost had a heart attack when he saw her in the heels and makeup but I assured him that it's only for Halloween and it's only for one day. I had to laugh when she started strutting her stuff in the heels while carrying the red cigarette holder (which of course doesn't have a cigarette in it). She's a mess but she's so cute.

Me? I tried my best. I really didn't feel like dressing up but after seeing how cute she looked in her costume, I couldn't leave her hanging with a half-decent Dalmatian to accompany her. So I stuck a pair of black leggings on, a long sleeved black shirt and I let Alex draw circles on my black shirt with white sidewalk chalk. I have the floppy Dalmatian ears on, I colored a black circle on my nose with eyeliner and put black dots on my cheeks. Lyla tried telling me to "sit" this morning at the breakfast table but she got the picture when I told her that I'm not a dog and she's not going to talk to me like a dog. "You excited?" I put my hand on her head and smile. I'm going to try my best to have fun today, despite the fact that I'm tired and I really don't want to be here.

"I'm excited, mama!" She hands me the pail of sand and starts walking faster towards her classroom. We're not even in the room yet and I can already hear little kids laughing and giggling and having fun. I carry the dirt and the sand into the room and take a deep breath because here goes nothing. Lyla hurries over to a little girl dressed as Elsa and I look around for the food table. I think me and Lyla were the final two that needed to arrive, because as soon as we're in the door, Miss Diane closes it. I put the bucket of sand and the flower pot of dirt down next to a platter of cupcakes, sigh and look around. There are two little girls dressed as Elsa, one little girl is Cinderella, another little girl is a vampire, there's a little boy dressed as the beast from Beauty and the Beast, there's a little boy dressed as Woody, one dressed as Buzz Lightyear, a little boy dressed as one of those yellow minions and the little girl standing next to him is dressed as the little girl named Agnes from Despicable Me…these kids are dressed to the nines and it's adorable. Lyla for sure has the best costume though. The only one that could give her a run for her money is Stephanie's little boy. He's dressed up as the little Boy Scout from that movie UP and he's so stinking cute. Steph's got the right idea though. She's wearing a pair of pink footie pajamas, her curly hair is put into two pigtails and she has freckles drawn on her cheeks. I think she's supposed to be a baby. She's got the right idea with the pajamas. Why didn't I think of that?

Since she's basically the only person I know, I walk over and stand by her. "…Loving the Cruella Deville, Jo…totally original." Steph greets me. "You come up with that or did she?"

"It was all her idea. I wanted her to go as Vanellope Von Schweetz…from Wreck-It Ralph? I loved the idea of putting candy in her hair, but she saw Cruella Deville and wouldn't let it go…and I was conned into being the dog." I fold my arms across my chest. "Quentin looks adorable as Russell. I like how he's got all the badges and everything. He's so cute." I sit back and watch the kids interact. Lyla's talking to her friend Kinsey, who's dressed up as Anna, not Elsa like Lyla said she would be. Anna makes more sense though, since the little girl is strawberry blonde. "I'm loving your idea though…If only I was that clever."

"Only you could make a dog look hot though. You rock the Dalmatian and the way your costume coordinates with hers is super cute." She takes a sip of her bottle of water and nudges me. "I'm diggin' the kid dressed as a hippie though. His parents should've given him a joint…totally more realistic."

"Yeah and I should've stuck a lit cigarette in Miss Cruella's cigarette holder. What a sure way to be arrested and reported to CPS." I shake my head at her and start laughing just as Lyla's teacher comes over to us.

"You made the flower pot and the sand bucket, didn't you?" She graciously interrupts me and Steph's conversation to ask me about the items I made. I nod my head and fix my ears so they're not crooked. "What a neat little idea. How creative." She smiles at me. "And Lyla's costume…what a contradiction because she's the total opposite of Cruella Deville in class!"

"You should see her at home." I roll my eyes and shake my head. The teacher laughs and moves on to talk to the other moms next. "I really don't wanna be here." I mumble to Steph.

"Me either. At least you contributed something cute to the food though. All I grabbed was a box of cookies." Just as she finishes her sentence, her son comes running over to her and tapping her on her leg. "What?" She kneels down and starts fixing the sash draped over his shoulder. He whispers something to her. "Yeah, fine. Go grab a Huggie. Daddy thinks those drinks will rot your teeth out but you're on the verge of losing those teeth anyway, so rot on buddy." She pats his butt and sends him to the drink table. "I'm so not looking forward to taking him trick or treating tonight. But Quentin's working late tonight and somebody's gotta do it, so…"

"You mind if me and Lyla tag along? Alex is working until 11:00 tonight too and I was gonna take her by myself but I don't really want to…maybe it won't be so bad if we keep each other company?" I swing my hair over my shoulders and sigh. "I'm too tired to do anything tonight…"

"Life of a mother, I guess." She sighs too. "But yeah, please do tag along. Quent needs someone to beg for candy with." She folds her arms and observes just like I'm doing. "…You wanna go get a drink later? After we take our children to be beggars and drop them off with the men that leave us to do all the hard work…what do you say we go let loose and have a drink?" I hesitate before I answer. I haven't had a drink in almost a year. Next month, it'll be a year since the accident and a year since I've drank. Maybe I do deserve to go let loose. As long as I can limit myself, I should be okay. What's a couple drinks with Steph? It's been a year…I can go have a drink.

I nod my head. "It's a date."

* * *

 **A/N:** I guess I should've just asked what kind of age range would you prefer for the next story?

With the storylines I have in mind, it can either be Alex as a junior in college and Jo as a sophomore in college or Alex as a fourth year resident and Jo as an intern. It can go one of two ways.

This story is only going to be 70 chapters. I'm getting sick of writing it and a little annoyed with it at times too, so I'm ready to end it ASAP. Expect a lot to be jam packed into the next five chapters because I'm beyond ready to end this.


	65. Frustration

With a family-size bag of nacho cheese flavored Doritos in my hand, I lazily drag my feet through the kitchen and over to the front door. I shove another handful of chips in my mouth, chew and pull open the door. I'm not into the whole trick-or-treating thing and I didn't buy any candy so since I'm womanless for a few hours, my night's been consisting of sitting in a dark house with a bag of chips, watching that cheesy old Halloween movie. Turning all the lights off and shutting the door worked because I haven't had any trick-or-treaters at all and the person that's at my door right now is only my dad. And since it's just my dad at the door, I didn't even bother to put on clothes. I was sitting on the couch naked at first because Jo and Lyla both are gone and I finally have a female-free household for once in my life. They've been gone for a while now and I'm not expecting them to be back for another few hours or so because Jo took her candy hunting up in her friend's neighborhood. So to completely relish in the fact that I don't have any females around, I striped down when I got home from work at 8:00 and sat on the couch naked. My dad called about ten minutes ago to say that he was stopping over, which forced me to put on a pair of boxers but I'm still shirtless.

I wasn't supposed to get off work until 11:00 tonight but when Jo called me on my lunch break and said that she planned on taking Lyla trick-or-treating with her friend, I hurried and did all my rounds early. I've been waiting so long to have a girl-free household and when the opportunity arose for me to finally live out my dream, I had to take it. Arizona let me leave at 8:00 since it was slow on the ICU and slow up in the NICU and it's been marvelous. I walked through the door, stripped completely down and it's been every man's dream so far. I've been drinking out of the cartons, eating chips straight from the bag, letting my junk and my balls just hang free…it's been marvelous. I was pissed when my dad called and said he was stopping by, only because it meant that I actually had to put on boxers. With a mouthful of chewed up chips, I lick my lips and step aside. "Hey, pop. Hurry up before the trick-or-treaters think I'm home." He comes in the house with me and immediately kicks his dirty work boots off at the door. "If you came to see Ly…" I swallow the chips in my mouth. "She's not here. Jo took her out trick-or-treating and she won't be back for a little while."

"I figured she wouldn't be here. I didn't come to see her." He takes off his gray jacket and puts it on the back of a chair at the kitchen table. "What'd she dress up as though?" He puts his keys down on the kitchen table and stretches his back out with a yawn. "I asked you to send me pictures of her at her little party thing and you didn't."

"That's because I didn't go. Jo took all the pictures. If you want pictures, you gotta text her. I took like…one and that was from this morning." I pull out a chair at my table and turn on the soft light above the stove so that we can see each other but we're still incognito enough for the trick-or-treaters to pass by my house without disturbing me. "She went as some…girl. From the movie about the dogs? You know, the girl with black and white hair from that one movie?" I tilt my head back and stare at the ceiling while I try to think of the movie's name. It's on the tip of my tongue but I just can't say it. "It's a Disney one…Amber used to watch it all the time…come on dad, you know what I'm talking about." I start snapping my fingers. "The dog movie! Ugh…Jo went as the dog to match her. The dog…what are those dogs called? The ones with the spots all over them?"

"Dalmatians?" He sits down at the kitchen table and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. "She go as Cruella Deville?"

"Yeah, that's it!" I give him a thumbs-up for helping me come up with the name because seriously, if he hadn't helped me come up with it, I would've never come up with it myself and it would've bothered the hell out of me for the rest of the night until I came up with the name of it. "Her costume turned out really nice. I thought I was going to have to hurt Jo for putting makeup on her face but I guess I can deal for one night." I roll up the bag of Doritos and stick them on the counter, wiping my orange-stained fingers off on the seat of my boxers. "She really went all out. She had the robe, the big poofy hair, the high heels and the makeup…I guess it was a neat little costume but I'm not big on the makeup." I glare at him as he lights up a cigarette. "She won the best costume contest in school though, so maybe it was worth it."

"That's neat." He takes a drag of his cigarette and sits back in the hair he's sitting in. "How have you and Jo been anyway? I'm assuming everything's been alright, considering the fact that you haven't been calling me and telling me how much you want to kill her. Everything okay? Living together and all." He taps on the top of his cigarette and lets an ash fall down on my kitchen table. I clench my jaw to fight through the annoyance.

"Yeah, everything's been…okay." I hesitate before saying "okay" and the slight wrinkle in my dad's brow lets me know that he noted the hesitation so I clear my throat and begin to elaborate before he can even question me about it. "We haven't been fighting or anything like that; Jo's just been sick. And she's been sick for a while too. She might just be tired, but I don't know for sure. She's been sleeping a whole lot and she just has that sick look on her face. I asked her if she has mono…because that's usually how it is with mono; you sleep a lot. She insists that she doesn't have mono so I don't know, maybe she's just tired…but she's getting ready to start this new job here in a minute." I run my hands through my hair and sigh. "I don't really want her to get this job, pop. I wish she wouldn't work, especially with how exhausted she's been lately… but I know if I tell her that…" I look down at the floor. "That'd be an argument for sure."

"But how's she been with Lyla? Last time we talked, didn't you tell me that she was a little overwhelmed with doing the whole…substitute mother thing?" He ashes his cigarette in the same pile he's been ashing it in again and takes another drag. He blows the smoke out of his mouth and coughs just slightly. "Has she gotten the hang of it yet?"

"Oh yeah." I nod my head. "She's been great as far as that goes. She gets Ly up every morning, gets her dressed, makes her lunches. She chaperons the field trips, attends the lame parties…she's a great mother as far as that goes but I think she's burning herself out for some reason that I don't understand. I don't…I don't mean to sound condescending, but all she does is sit at home. And I appreciate that, pop. I appreciate that she's the one who does the school thing with Lyla and I appreciate the fact that I get to come home every day with food on the table and with a clean house. Jo's an amazing woman and I love her to death for everything she does. But that's…all she does, you know? All she does is sit around and take care of the house…so I don't know why she's so tired. There's gotta be some other reason she's so tired, right? Because it's not like she can't just lie down and take a nap when she wants to. She's home alone most of the time. So if it's not mono, I don't know what it could be."

"Maybe she's an insomniac. Does she sleep when you go to bed at night?" He suggests.

"Yeah, dad. She sleeps hard during the night. Like the night before yesterday night, she fell asleep at 11:00 and slept all the way until it was time to get Lyla up. And then she comes home, takes a nap and sleeps through her alarm and I had to go pick Lyla up because she forgot about her. That's not normal for Jo. She doesn't usually just knock out like that. And she was sleeping HARD, too. I'm talking…face in the pillow, snoring, drunken-stupor kind of sleep. She was passed out dad. I had to be forceful in order to get her to wake up. And I'm so worried about her but at the same time…I don't want to be worried about her because Jo's the type where…she doesn't really like it when I'm concerned about her, you know? So I don't know what to do besides ignore it and pretend like I don't notice it. But it's kind of hard to ignore when she sleeps through picking Lyla up, when she can't keep her head up at the dinner table and when she's never in the mood to have sex anymore. I really wish that she'd go see a doctor but you know Jo…" I sigh again.

"…You think she might be sick?" The tone of his voice is soft, as if he's trying to speak delicately so that his words don't solidify in thin air, crash down and break. I swallow a small, dry lump in the back of my throat and feel his words sting me from my core. I really wish he hadn't said that. Of course that's exactly what was running through my mind. I'm sitting around watching my girlfriend waste away, practically. She's lethargic, fatigued and completely deadened anymore. It's like she's living with a leech on her back that's slowly but surely sucking the life out of me. So yeah, of course her being sick is exactly what's running through my mind but he didn't have to say that. It's bad enough that I can't bear thinking about it but now I have to hear it too?

"I don't know, dad." I run my fingers through my hair again and rub the back of my neck, getting a little bit choked up just thinking about the very real possibility that something could be wrong with Jo. There's _something_ wrong with her, no doubt about that. I don't know what exactly it is, but she's not normal Jo and she hasn't been normal Jo for about a month now. "I don't know if maybe her hips are bothering her real bad and that's why she wants to lie down so much…because you know she's got all those plates and screws in her pelvis…" If she really is sick, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do. I'm just a magnet, aren't I? It's something with me. Like I'm damaged goods or whatever. "I was actually thinking about moving outta here…to some place that's one floor so she doesn't have to go up steps all the time." I've been thinking about moving out of this house for a while now, actually. I just think a change of scenery would be nice. I feel like this house holds too many negative memories. My wife died in this house, my kid got taken away in this house, I spent so many sleepless nights in this house, my life literally fell apart in this house. Something about the fact that I'm now sleeping with Jo in the same room that I used to sleep with my dead wife in is unsettling to me. A new house could be a new beginning for all of us, plus it would be convenient for Jo to live in a house where everything's on one floor for her. I've just been thinking about it. What are the chances that two women I love end up sick? The problem has to be me, doesn't it? "What am I gonna do if she is sick though?" I rub my fingers along my desperately-need-to-shave stubble and lick my lips. "What am I gonna do?"

"Well, sitting around waiting for her to let you help her isn't going to do much for the situation, Al. You gotta take her to see someone. Just tell her that you want to get tests ran, that's all. Are you sure she doesn't have mono? Because that's what it's sounding like to me. I'm no doctor, but that's just what it sounds like…the chronic fatigue and stuff. You sure she doesn't have mono?" I nod my head and continue looking down at the ground, trying to think of a way to convince Jo to let me take her to see somebody that'll run a blood test on her. That's all I want her to let me do. I just want her to let me get someone to draw some of her blood and test it for everything. She's always so worried about insurance and stuff but it's really not a big deal for me to just put her on mine. I get really good insurance through the hospital and I can add her to it. It'll cost me some serious money to do it since we're not married but all I have to do is prove that we're living together, really. I can add her to my insurance policy. "How are you so sure she doesn't have mono?"

"Because I tested myself." I mumble and finally look up again. I don't have a plan for how I'm going to beg her to let me take her to the doctor so I think I'm just going to have to be blunt and ask her straight out. That's all I've got. "If Jo has mono, there's no way I DON'T have mono. You know how contagious that is? I've licked her tonsils on more than one occasion so if she has mono, there's no way in hell that I don't have it. And I don't. I ran a test on myself at work earlier and it came back negative. It's not mono." I glance at the pile of cigarette ashes he left on the corner of my kitchen table and groan. "If you're gonna smoke in my house, at least bring an ashtray with you." I shake my head at him and leave the kitchen so I can go grab the cleaning supplies and a sponge from the downstairs bathroom. Anyway, I think I'm just going to have to settle for just asking Jo flat out if I can take her to the doctors. I just need someone to run a blood test and that's all. If the blood test comes back normal then I'll leave her alone. But I need the blood test to put my own mind at ease. I'm going to drive myself crazy thinking about all the things that could be wrong with her; cancer included. I fling the light switch up and turn the light on in the bathroom.

I open up the cabinet underneath the sink and kneel down so I can find the lemon-scented Mr. Clean spray that Jo bought a few days ago to clean the toilet and the stove. I don't want my kitchen table smelling like cigarette ashes so I need something scented to clean it up, plus the bleach in the spray will take away the burn marks that he might've left on the table by ashing his cigarette on the marble. I push aside a black box of Jo's tampons, a package of Ly's pull-ups, a bottle of Pine-Sol and look around towards the back since I clearly can't see the spray bottle yet. I spot it in the way back of the cabinet, right next to a can of bug spray. I wrap my hand around it and drag it out, knocking something down in the process. I put the spray down on the floor next to where I'm kneeling and reach back into the cabinet so I can pick up what I knocked over. I look inside the cabinet to make sure I put everything back neatly because if I don't, Jo will scream at me for leaving it a mess. When I look inside, I see something pink near the back…way in the back. I don't know why, but something in my conscience is telling me to grab the pink thing. Normally, I'd just let it go because whatever's underneath the sink really isn't of any interest to me, but something is nagging me and telling me that I should pick it up. So I do. I wrap my hand around it, only to find that it's a cardboard box. Slightly disappointed because I thought I was going to find something better than just a cardboard box, I pull it out of the cabinet anyway...and I immediately wish I had just left it where it was at. When I look at what the box is for, I feel like someone just opened the back of my shirt, dumped ice water down it and left me to freeze.

The box is light pink and I read over the words on it with my eyes. _The ONLY Brand That Can Tell You SIX DAYS Sooner! First Response Pregnancy. New Design! Curved To Fit Your Hand! Now With Wider Test Strip! Test & Confirm Pregnancy Test: First To Detect Technology. Over 99% Accurate! 2 Tests Included. _I chew on the inside of my cheek and turn the box on it's side, only to find that it's still unopened. It's a brand new box. I close the cabinet, hold the box in my hands and sit down on my butt, staring at it. I reread the words on the box as if they'll change if I continue to stare but of course, they don't. She was trying to hide this from me. She had it way in the back of the cabinet, hidden…from me. She bought this yesterday. I know she did. Later in the evening yesterday after I woke her up, she asked me if she could borrow forty bucks because she needed to get hair chalk to complete Lyla's costume. Of course, I gave it to her because Jo can ask me for anything and I'll make it happen. But when she got back from running to Walmart, she only brought me five bucks in change. I knew that hair chalk didn't cost 35 bucks but I didn't think twice about where the extra money went because I trust her. She hid this from me.

She thinks she's pregnant and she doesn't want me to know. She didn't tell me that she was buying a pregnancy test and when she did buy the test, she stuck the box way in the back so I wouldn't be able to see it. Why doesn't she want me to know? Why did she make such an effort to keep it from me? Is that what's been wrong with her lately? Is she pregnant? Or does she think she's pregnant and she doesn't want me to know? Why does she feel like she has to keep this a secret from me, though? She doesn't have to keep it a secret from me. She's been acting differently for a while now…which means that she's been suspecting this for a while. Which means that she's been going through this all alone for a while. She's been going through all of this by herself. But why doesn't she want me to know, though? Shouldn't I know? I have a right to know that my girlfriend thinks she's having my baby, right? Does she feel like she can't come to me with this? Because that's not true. Jo can come to me with anything in this world. I'm her boyfriend and at this point, I'd eventually like to be her husband. She should be able to come to me with anything, yet she feels like she has to hide this from me? She feels like she can't talk to me about it, she feels like she's better off going through the possibility of being pregnant alone and she feels like she needs to hide the pregnancy test in the back of the cabinet so I don't see it? Why though? Haven't I been understanding enough? What is she so afraid of?

I keep the box in my hand and pick myself up off the floor. I turn off the light, completely undermining the fact that I originally went into the bathroom for cleaning supplies. I could care less about my dad's cigarette ashes right now. I carry the pink box back into the kitchen and say nothing. All I do is set it down on the table and collapse into a chair. I don't know whether I want to cry, yell, throw things or just sit down and be quiet. I don't know how I feel. I'm a mixture of everything right now. I want to cry because apparently, I haven't been a good enough boyfriend for her to feel comfortable enough to come to me with something as huge as this. I want to yell because what the hell? She has no right to keep something like this from me! I want to throw things because after everything, I thought Jo and I were at this place where we kept no damn secrets from each other. And I just want to sit here quietly because I need a moment to process all of this. Guess what wins? I stare at the box I just sat on the table and sit in silence. "Is she pregnant?" My dad doesn't get that all I want to do is sit here in silence. Of course he doesn't get that. Of course he has to break the silence. All I can muster up is a shoulder shrug. "Does she think she is?" Another shrug. "I thought she couldn't…"

"Me too!" I'm past the whole "I just want to sit and be quiet" thing. The emotions have been processed, I'm over it and the most prominent emotion is the anger at this moment. "She told me that she couldn't have kids and like an idiot…I took her word over my medical training and I trusted her!" I slide out of my chair and put my hands over my face, pressing my palms hard into my eyes. I'm not angry, I'm just…HOW COULD JO?! "She doesn't even tell me about it, either! She hides the box in the back of the goddamn cabinet and keeps it to herself! She doesn't even—" The chair catches the brunt of my frustration as I give it a hard, firm kick and it goes flying across the kitchen and crashing into the wall. "If I knew there was even a CHANCE, I would've…She told me that she couldn't! She told me she couldn't and like some DUMBASS, I believed her!" I pace around the kitchen, shaking. "If I knew there was even the SLIGHTEST chance, I would've put a bag on it! I would've put a bag on it, I would've pulled out…FUCK." I slam my fist against the counter and accidentally put a slight dent in the surface of it.

"So you didn't know about this?" He picks up the box and waves it around.

"OF COURSE I DIDN'T KNOW, DAD!" I can feel the veins in my neck straining from screaming. "I HAD TO OPEN UP THE DAMN CABINET AND FIND…" I pinch the bridge of my nose in an attempt to cool down. I'm so frustrated with this entire situation. I'm frustrated that I couldn't do something to prevent it. I'm frustrated that she's been keeping me in the dark for all this time because I know Jo. I know she's been keeping this from me. This isn't something that she just started thinking about yesterday—this is something that's been on her mind for a while now. I KNOW Jo. And even if it is something that she just started thinking about yesterday, SHE SHOULD'VE CAME TO ME instead of hiding the damn box from me! "I trusted her when she said she couldn't…I shouldn't have, but I did. And we didn't prevent _anything._ No condoms, no birth control, no pulling out, NOTHING. We didn't take any kind of…precautions. Neither one of us want this…I would've wrapped it up…"

"So what if she is, Alex? Then what?" He sounds like he's challenging me. "You're telling me that you didn't want this…yet you two made no effort to prevent it from happening? Sounds like you wanted it to me. So what if she is pregnant? What are you going to do then?"

"PAUSE!" I take a step toward him and hold my hand out. "I DID NOT WANT THIS! _SHE_ TOLD ME THAT SHE COULDN'T GET PREGNANT! SAID THEY DID SOMETHING TO HER AFTER THE ACCIDENT AND SHE COULDN'T HAVE KIDS ANYMORE! SO DON'T TELL ME THAT I WANTED THIS, DAD! I DID NOT WANT THIS! IF SHE WOULD'VE TOLD ME INSTEAD OF LYING TO—"

"So what are you going to do about it if she IS, Alex?!" He raises his voice and interrupts me.

"OBVIOUSLY I'M GOING TO DEAL WITH IT DAD, WHAT THE HELL?! I'M GONNA TAKE CARE OF IT; I'M NOT GONNA RUN!" I clamp my hands over my face again and take a deep breath. I can't believe this is happening. I didn't want this to happen. Not right now, at least. I didn't want to get Jo pregnant. But of course I'm going to stick around. I'm not a punk and I wasn't raised to walk out on my responsibilities. And it's still my kid no matter what. It's going to be MY kid. I can't imagine having another Lyla walking around out there in the world without being in it's life. I didn't want this right now but of course I'm going to take care of it. And I'm not even pissed off for the fact that I didn't want another baby with Jo right now, because I'm open to having more kids as long as they're with her. I'm pissed off for the fact that she's been hiding something this big from me. Jo and I can deal with a baby, whatever. But what I CAN'T deal with is her lying to me and keeping secrets from me. That's what I CAN'T deal with. "We just don't need this right now. It's way too soon for us to deal with this. We'll deal with it but we really don't need this right now." I sigh and just shake my head. "We don't need this."

"Are you going to marry her if she is?" He asks and everything in my body wants to bawl my hand up into a fist and knock his damn head off. I'm so sick of his dumb ass questions. He has one more time to ask me a stupid question and I'm hitting him; I don't care if he's my father or not. He's just very…traditional. My dad's pretty liberal in his ways and he doesn't judge much. He didn't judge back when Aaron went through his "I think I might be gay" phase, he didn't judge me back when I was dragging different girls in and out of the house every weekend and he didn't judge Amber when she said that she wanted to dye her pretty blonde locks bright purple. He's very liberal, but he's also very traditional. He thinks that couples should be married before they have children, he thinks that men should work hard to support their families while the woman doesn't have to lift a finger. He has very traditionalist views on family and I know that's why he's asking me if I'm going to marry Jo. And I hate to disappoint him, but my answer is no.

"No. I'm not marrying Jo just because she has my baby, if she is pregnant. If I'm going to marry Jo, it's going to be because I really, truly love her…not because she gave birth to a kid that looks like me. And if I do decide to marry her, it won't be for a while. We're not going to stick together just because we have a kid. If she's pregnant, I'm going to let her know from the start that she doesn't have to stay with me just because we have a kid together and I'm sure she'll feel the same way. A kid isn't going to determine the fate of our relationship. Especially if it's a kid that neither one of us were ready to have." I can tell by the look on his face that he's a little bit offended but I really don't care. "Look dad, I know what you think I should do, but your views are not my views. I don't believe that Jo and I have to be bound together for a lifetime based off a kid. I love her…I love her with all my heart and I would like to be with her for the rest of our lives but that's not going to be dependent upon a kid."

"…Alright, son." He nods his head once. "I'm proud of you…you know." He mumbles. "Don't think I tell you that enough…" He finally puts the pregnancy test box back down in the middle of the kitchen table and nudges it toward me. "So how are you going to go about it?"

"I really don't know." I pick the box up and stare at it for the hundredth time since I found it. "I'm gonna really try not to blow up on her but I don't know if I'll be able to stay calm. I know there's a reason why she felt the need to hide it from me and I know there's a reason she hasn't taken one of the tests yet. I know there's something going on in that head of hers that I don't understand and for that reason, I'm really going to try to be calm. But dad…we don't keep secrets from each other. She should be able to come to me with anything…especially something like this. I don't know how I'm going to manage to not be mad at her. I don't know how I could not be—" All of a sudden, I'm interrupted by the sound of the doorknob jiggling and I feel my entire body go cold. They're back.

I hurry up and stash the pregnancy test up in the plate cabinet before they even get through the door and I shoot my dad an "act normal" kind of look. He fashions a nod my way and sits up straight in his chair. Just as the door starts to open up, I bend down and pick up the chair that I kicked. Lyla walks through the door first, carrying the pink pillowcase I gave her to collect her candy in. It's pretty filled up…she's going to have so many cavities. Jo walks in after her, still dressed in the tight black leggings she wore this morning but one of my wrestling hoodies instead. She's not wearing the dog ears anymore, the dots she drew on her cheek and the nose she gave herself this morning are all gone too. I can't even look at her. "Daddy, looky! Looky!" Still dressed in her award-winning costume, Lyla gallops over to me in her high heels and holds out her overfilled pillowcase of candy.

"What are you doing home, baby?" Jo kicks off the pair of red Converse sneakers she was wearing and walks over to me in her fuzzy yellow socks. "I thought you didn't get off until 11:00." I can't even look at her right now, let alone talk to her. If I start talking to Jo with the way I'm feeling right now, I might end up screaming at her and I don't want to do that, so instead of talking to her, I kneel down and give Lyla all my attention. It's blatantly obvious that I'm ignoring her, but I don't know how else to cope with the anger and slight hatred I'm feeling towards her right now. "…Okay." She notices that I'm ignoring her and backs away from me. "Hi Jimmy." She moves on to my dad next. "How've you been?" She and my dad start having their own side conversation and I just talk to Lyla.

"How are you gonna eat all this candy, Ly? Your teeth are gonna rot clean outta your little head." I take the pillowcase off of her and open it up. She has so much candy in here that it's not even funny. I'm starting to wonder how she managed to carry it over to me because this little sack has some weight to it. "Can daddy have some candy?" She nods and hands me the lollipop she's already been sucking on. I smirk at her somewhat generosity and pick her up, sack of candy and all. "How was your party at school today?" I peck her on her cheek with my lips and dismiss the fact that she's getting my bare shoulder sticky since I'm still not wearing a shirt. "Did you have fun? Jojo said you won the costume contest…what'd you win?" Jo shoots me a look when she hears me refer to her as "Jojo" and that's how she knows she did something wrong. Something's always wrong when I knock her back down to "Jojo" status.

"I winned…I won a medal. It's upstairs…I show it to you later." She keeps offering me a lick of her lollipop until eventually, I just stick my tongue out. She wipes the lollipop across my tongue and gives me one of her toothless Lyla grins. "Mommy says you has to check my candy before I can eat it. So nobody try to kill me by putting bad stuffs in my candy. Can you check it daddy?"

"Are you hungry, Alex? I was going to make some chicken and french fries for me and Lyla…do you want some?" Jo tries to talk to me once more but yet again, I ignore her.

"Yeah, I'll check your candy." I carry her over to the table and sit her down across from my dad. Jo taps me on my shoulder but I turn away from her. I dump Lyla's candy out on the kitchen table and start sifting through it. She taps my shoulder again so this time, I don't turn to her but I do say something. "I'm busy."

"…Okay well, I just wanted to tell you that I'm leaving out a little later with my friend. I'm leaving around 11:30…" She's using her most innocent, "I know I'm in trouble" voice on me. She's talking like she's scared. "Unless you want me to stay home…"

"I don't want anything to do with you." I mumble and pick up a Butterfinger to look at it. My dad looks up from the pile of candy and at me. I softly shrug one of my shoulders and continue giving my daughter all my attention. My dad goes from looking at me to looking at Jo next.

"…What did I do?" Jo questions. "….Why's everybody looking at me like this? What did I do?" She backs away from me and looks at both me and my dad. "Can somebody tell me what I did?"

I sigh hard. I can't ignore this anymore. I was trying to put off talking to her about it until I calmed down enough to know that once I start talking to her about it, I'm not going to yell but I can't put it off anymore. I'm probably going to scream at her and I'm probably going to call her a dirty name or two but it's only because I'm mad and I was unable to hold it in until I calmed down. "Ly, sit here with Pappy. He'll check your candy so you can eat it. Daddy and Jojo have to go talk about something." I tilt my head to the side and press my lips to her temple. "I'll be right back." My dad's looking at Jo like he's about to witness a puppy get slaughtered. He shakes his head and starts talking to Lyla. I finally look at Jo.

This would be so much easier if she were, I don't know, ugly? It would be so much easier to be pissed at her if she wasn't so damn beautiful. She's standing beside the fridge with her hands in the pocket of the hoodie she's wearing and her head is tilted down towards the floor. Since her head is down, her hair fell forward and created a curtain before her face, so all I can see is her long, thick brunette hair. I clear my throat loud to let her know that I'm ready to deal with her and her head snaps up. "What's this about?" One half of her hair is tucked behind her ear and the other half is covering her left eye. She looks nervous and so sad. I make sure Lyla's back is turned and when I can see that it is, I open up the plate cabinet and snatch out the pink cardboard box. Her face completely drains of color when I bring the box out and her shoulders slouch. I motion with my head for her to follow me and without even saying anything, she just does. I feel like a principal that just found a pocketknife or a marijuana stash in a kid's backpack and I'm about to go chastise her for it.

But she follows me right to the bathroom.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"WHY WERE YOU HIDING IT FROM ME, JO?! YOU HAVE TO TELL ME THINGS LIKE THIS! THINGS LIKE THIS AREN'T MEANT FOR YOU TO KEEP IT A SECRET! YOU CAN'T DEAL WITH SOMETHING LIKE THIS ON YOUR OWN!" My ears are buzzing and ringing with every word he yells at me. I wiggle my feet and watch the bumps that form my toes underneath the fuzzy yellow socks that I'm wearing move around. I can't look him in his eye right now. Alex has been mad at me before but he's never yelled at me like this. I glide my top teeth along my bottom lip and just listen to him because that's all I can do. I can't apologize to him, I can't give him a reason as to why I did what I did, I can't explain to him what I was thinking because I just don't know. "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU ANYMORE?! IT'S LIKE I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU! WE DON'T KEEP SECRETS FROM EACH OTHER, JO! WHY ARE YOU BEING SO DAMN STUPID ALL OF A SUDDEN?!" I feel a tear tickle my cheek so I swiftly take my hand out of the pocket of my hoodie, reach up, knock it away and quickly put my hand back in the pocket. "YOU'RE BEING STUPID! YOU THINK IGNORING SOMETHING LIKE THIS IS FOR THE BEST?! YOU THINK NOT TELLING ME ABOUT IT IS THE SMART THING TO DO?! WHO ARE YOU ANYMORE?! YOU CAN TELL ME ABOUT ANYTHING, JO! ANYTHING! BUT ESPECIALLY THIS!" I lick my lips and blink my eyes so the tears that collected around the rim of my eyelid can fall. "AND YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SAY TO ME, JO?! NOTHING?!" I just keep my head down. With my peripheral vision, I see his body shift a little and then, I feel the box that the pregnancy test is in hit me on my knee. I flinch away from him even after he already threw the box and just sigh. "You make me hate you."

"This is why I didn't want to tell you, Alex." I pick my head up and look at him. His face is fiery, bright red and the veins in his neck are all strained and popping out. "I didn't want you to be mad at me. I just…" I put my hand over my face and roll my eyes up to the ceiling, both trying to think of a way to explain this to him and trying not to cry. "I didn't want to worry you about it until I knew that we had a reason to worry. I wanted to find out for sure before I told you because I didn't want you to worry if there really wasn't a reason to worry. I started to take one of the tests last night but I got scared and I couldn't even open the package. But I was gonna do it tonight…I was gonna do it tonight before you got off work and I was gonna tell you…eventually. But this is why I didn't want to. I know you don't want a baby and I…don't either, really. And there's no way to tell you that we're expecting a baby that neither one of us want and I freaked…I panicked. I got scared and I panicked. Because we don't need this. We don't need things to change right now when we're just now really figuring it out and you said that you don't want another baby and I panicked! I didn't know HOW to tell you. I can't just…I couldn't just…" My jaw starts trembling. "You don't just have this conversation at the dinner table and it doesn't make good pillow talk…so when was I going to tell you? HOW was I going to tell you? I can't just say 'hey Alex, I think I might be pregnant'…I was too scared and I don't want to know if I am. I don't want to know…"

"BUT I WANT TO KNOW, JO! DAMN YOU!" He puts his hands on my shoulders and forces me against the wall. "YOU DON'T GET TO MAKE THESE DECISIONS ON YOUR OWN! NOT WHEN THERE'S A POSSIBILITY THAT YOU MIGHT BE CARRYING A KID THAT'S HALF MINE! YOU DON'T GET TO DECIDE WHEN YOU CAN TELL ME AND IF YOU WANT TO FIND OUT OR NOT! YOU DON'T GET TO DECIDE WHEN I CAN BE A FATHER!"

"I'm not trying to!" I put my hands against his chest and try pushing him off of me but he's got a wicked grip on my shoulders. "Alex, that wasn't my intention and I'm sorry! I was just thinking about how much we don't need a baby right now and how I can't…have one anyway. I don't want to get excited or scared or ANYTHING before we even have a reason to! I don't want to know…I don't want to live for the next few months wondering if every stomach cramp is me having a miscarriage! And I don't want to inconvenience you or anyone else, Alex…we don't need a baby…I really don't want to be pregnant right now and I got scared. I only think that I might be…because I haven't had my period in a while but that's ALL. I don't have any other symptoms. I'm not gaining weight, my boobs aren't sore, I'm not nauseous at all….the only thing is that my period has been MIA for two months but that's ALL."

"You know what else a sign of pregnancy is, Jo?" He starts loosening his grip on my shoulders. "…Extreme fatigue." He lets me go and steps away from me, shaking his head. "You're right. We don't need a baby right now. We don't need one and if you're not pregnant, I won't shed a damn tear. In fact, if you're not pregnant, I might fucking rejoice. But if you ARE, we can take care of this. I'm a doctor, Jo. I can take care of this, WE can take care of this and we can do this. We can raise a baby TOGETHER. It doesn't mean that we have to BE together but we can do it together. You're damn right, we don't need a baby where we're at right now. But we can have one. We'll be fine if we do have one."

"…But you said you don't want another baby. You said you don't want any more kids." I sniff. "I don't either. I just figured out how to make it work with one…with a four year old. And we're gonna throw a baby in the middle of all of this? This is such a mess…" I shake my head.

"We don't know if we're throwing a baby in the middle yet, Jo. We don't know." He bends down and picks up the box that he threw at me. He starts opening it up and pulling out one of the tests. "You're gonna sit down on the toilet right now, you're going to piss on this and we're going to find out if we truly are in deep shit." He pops the test out of the wrapper and holds it out for me to take.

I look at the test and shake my head. I can't do this. I can't do this. What if I am pregnant? I can't… "I don't have to pee right now." I push the test away from me.

"I'll go get you a cup of juice." He holds it out again.

"…I'm really hungry right now, Alex…lemme just go cook." I try sidestepping him so I can get out of this bathroom but he grabs my hand. "I'm hungry…"

"It's a two minute test." He mumbles. "Pull your pants down and get on the toilet."

"Can it please wait? Can we please do it later? After I…after I come home? I have a date with my friend. I promise I'll take it after I come back."

"You're not drinking if you have a baby in there, Jo. So sit your ass down on the toilet." He stands in front of the door. "Now…before I make you."

"I'll drink coffee. I swear, I'll drink coffee." I feel like I'm going to puke. I don't want to take this test. I really don't want to find out. If I find out then I'm just going to spend the remainder of this in fear. First of all, I'm going to have to listen to a doctor tell me that it's in my best interest to terminate. I'm physically incapable of carrying a baby. My uterus cannot stretch and expand to accommodate a baby, my pelvis doesn't widen to accommodate the extra weight and my cervix is too weak to keep a baby inside. They're going to tell me that I should terminate the pregnancy and I already know that I'm not going to be able to do that, so then I'll just be sitting around in fear. I'll be scared that every ache and pain I feel is me having a miscarriage, I'll be scared that every little speck of blood is my baby coming out…I'm just not ready for this. I'm not ready to find out if I am or if I'm not. I can't handle this. "Just please, Alex…I'm not prepared for this."

"Sit down, Jo. I'm not going to tell you again." He nudges me back towards the toilet. "You need to find out sooner, rather than later. The sooner you know if you are, the sooner we can take care of you. We can get you vitamins, we can get you to a good doctor that'll keep track of you because you're high-risk…you need to take care of this right now. RIGHT now." He opens up the toilet seat for me. "And if you're not, you can go out and have drinks with your friend. But you need to find out right now." I close my eyes and out of nowhere, tears just start flooding my damn face. "…Jo, I'm here." He pulls me closer and wraps his arms around me. "I'm right here. And I'm going to be right here. You're not doing this alone anymore and you don't have to. You don't have to do this alone. Lean on me, okay? You've got me." He strokes my back. "Sit down."

I sniff and pull my pants down. I pull my underwear down too. I hold up the hoodie so it doesn't get caught under my butt or anything and sit down. He pulls the cap off the sensor and hands me the test. I shove my hand between my legs and I just can't stop crying. Alex kneels down on the floor in front of me and keeps his arms around me the entire time I'm peeing. His nails are brushing against the back of my neck, his mouth is near my ear and he's mumbling "it's okay" over and over again. Once my bladder is empty, I slip the stick from between my legs and he takes it off of me, getting my pee on him and everything. "…What are we gonna do?" I ask him, tears covering my cheeks.

He pops the cap back over the sensor and sticks the urine-christened stick on the counter of the sink. "…We're gonna wait."

* * *

 **A/N:** I'm having a really hard time deciding which idea to go off of next. I've never had this tough of a time deciding and you guys seem pretty split too, which doesn't make it any easier lol. So I think that I might do something different than I've done in the past. I think I'm going to write two different excerpts of the stories I'm considering writing. I'm going to write one chapter of the first idea and one chapter of the second idea and I'm going to let you guys read them and you can decide which one you want to see fleshed out more. I'll give you guys the basis of what the two ideas are and sometime this week, I'll have both mini chapters up so you guys can tell me which one you'd enjoy more.

The college one is an AU, Jo-centric story. It won't be nearly as AU as YLAM has been and as AU as ITE was. There will be some of the other characters in the college one as well and the reason why the college age grouping is so important is because there will be no marriage and babies in it at all. I wanted them to be mature enough to handle adult relationships, but still not-yet mature enough to want to settle down and stop making childish mistakes. It's all about a pure, innocent kind of love that's not yet disturbed by marriage or having a family. In it, Jo maintains her foster kid status but Alex does not. The two of them met when Alex's mom fostered Jo when she was a kid and even though his mom didn't adopt her, the two of them still remained really close friends. Alex always saw her as a little sister because she's two years younger than her and up until that point, their relationship has always been very brother/sister. Jo starts developing feelings for him while still being his "person". So she has to deal with him telling her about other girls he's slept with, feelings he has for other girls...all the while dealing with her own blossoming feelings for him.

The resident/intern story isn't as fleshed out as the college one, but that's only because I haven't been thinking about it for as long. It's just slightly AU because it's set in a time period where Jo didn't really exist in the show yet. It's both Jo and Alex centric, but a little more centered in on Jo's feelings. It's about Jo coming along as an intern back when Alex was still man-whoring around and she was just one of his many women but she wants to be more than just one of his many women. It's not that detailed yet but I haven't been thinking about it for as long as I've been thinking about the college one.

Like I said, sometime this week, I'll be posting little snippets of each idea and you can tell me which one you'd want to see fleshed out more. But until then, you can go ahead and tell me which one you think sounds the most interesting based off the crappy descriptions I just gave. I won't tell you which one I'm leaning towards more personally because I want you guys to make unbiased decisions.

I hope I'm not annoying you guys too badly...I just can't decide.


	66. In The Morning

**A/N:** This chapter is a little shorter than the rest, but that's only because I'm running out of material to cover since the story's winding down. Enjoy anyway.

* * *

The sound of the ice cubes clanking against the glass that's sitting in front of me as I swish my little black straw back and forth inside it is kind of annoying but at the same time, it's soothing. The clear liquid in the glass in front of me hasn't lowered, it's only risen since I've been letting the ice cubes inside of it just melt. I'm sure if I were to actually put my lips to the straw and take a sip of it now, it would taste terrible because it's all watered down from me letting it sit but I just can't. I can't bring myself to put my lips against the straw, I can't bring myself to suck and I can't bring myself to take a sip of it. I don't know if it's a matter of me not wanting to taste it or if it's a matter of me being afraid of what's going to happen once I _do_ taste it but whatever the reason, I can't drink it. It looks appetizing. It's clear up at the top and towards the bottom where all the strawberry drink mix fell to is a neat shade of pink. I drum my fingers on the wooden counter I'm sitting at and just sigh. I'll try to take a sip again in a few more minutes. I take my fingers off the straw and sit back, resting my weight fully on my butt. I run my hand through my hair, sigh and turn my head to face Stephanie.

"Why are you acting like I dragged you out of the house against your will?" She pushes her empty glass towards the bartender so she'll take it when she gets the chance to and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "If you didn't want to come, you didn't have to. I just thought it'd be nice to hang out aside from wiping boogers, kissing bloody kneecaps and filling sippy cups. But you really didn't have to come, Jo. It was just an offer." She runs her hand through her own curly hair and adjusts her glasses on her face. "Maybe we don't know how to have fun outside of being mothers…"

"It's not that I didn't want to come, Steph. I'm glad to be here…really." I rest my elbows on the counter and look around. It's a small bar with bricked walls, dimmed lights and crowded tables. It smells like cheap wine, cigarettes and perfume in here and the most that's happening is amongst the five men standing around the dartboard in the back, drunkenly tossing darts at it but I didn't lie to her when I said that I'm glad to be here. I am glad to be here. For one, I'm not sitting in the house and slaving over a stove and I'm not ironing an outfit for a four year old to wear to preschool tomorrow. I'm away from Alex—which I desperately needed—and I'm out with a friend that I'm able to just sit and talk to. I am very glad to be here and out of the house. But it's kind of hard to enjoy it when I know that Alex is at home mad at me. We've had plenty of fights before but nothing like what happened earlier. He's never backed me against a wall, he's never screamed in my face, he's never thrown something at me and we've never had it out the way we did in the bathroom. He got all sweet afterwards when the test came back negative, but he's still pretty pissed that I kept a secret from him. I tried to get him to understand where I was coming from but he just doesn't and sometimes getting Alex to understand is impossible so when I left the house to come be with Steph, things were still kind of rocky. "My mind is just still back at home, arguing with Alex."

"Yeah, fighting with your man is enough to ruin your mood." She puts her hand against my elbow as a sign of support but soon after, she takes it away. "But I thought you said you're not pregnant, so what's the big deal? What are you even arguing about anymore if you're not pregnant?"

I told Steph back when Lyla and Quentin were trick-or-treating that I thought I might be pregnant. I wanted her advice on how to tell Alex about it and she was just there for me. She changed our plans from drinks to a movie but once I got in the car and told her that I wasn't pregnant, she thought we should drink to that and our plans changed back to drinks again. Aside from my mom, she's the only person I confided in about my possible pregnancy. So she knows all about me being nervous to tell him and when I got in the car with her to come to the bar, the first thing she asked me about was if I told him. "He's mad that I didn't tell him sooner. And he's mad that he found the test underneath the sink. He doesn't think he can trust me anymore but he doesn't understand that I was freaking out. He doesn't get that me being pregnant wasn't something I could just come out and say. All he's thinking about is the fact that I didn't tell him about it as soon as I suspected something. And maybe I should've. Maybe I should've told him about it as soon as I realized that I hadn't gotten my period, but I just couldn't. I was scared. And I know that I should've trusted him as far as that goes but when I get scared Steph…" I shrug my shoulders. "I just tend to keep things bottled in. And I really need him to understand that but he doesn't."

"I think it's a male thing though. I just don't think men are capable of holding more than one point of view in their minds. It's a…a pride thing, I think. They all just want to feel wanted and needed and when you show them that you don't want nor need them for something, they get all mad about it. They're the men, you know? The fixers. They're supposed to be able to fix everything and when they have a problem that they can't fix…they lash out. I don't think him attacking you was anything personal…I think it was just his ego getting a little bit bruised. He wanted you to keep him in the loop…he wanted you to need him." She spins softly from side to side on her bar stool. "At least that's how Quentin is. He gets so mad when I do things without consulting him. Even when they're things he doesn't necessarily get a vote on. He gets mad when I take the car for an oil change without telling him first. I really think it's just a guy thing."

"You might be right." I rest my chin in the palm of my hand and exhale. "But Alex…he went off about how I was depriving him of his rights as a father and all that. And I'm not saying that he doesn't have a right to be mad at me because he does. He has every right to be mad at me and he had every right to yell and scream because…I mean, it's not like I took the car for an oil change without telling him, Steph. I hid a possible pregnancy from him for almost two months. I started suspecting something after we came back from Disney On Ice. That's a long time to hide a maybe baby from the father. So yeah, I kind of knew he was going to be pissed off and I expected that and I don't blame him for that. But I just want a little bit of understanding from him. I expected him to be mad and I don't even blame him for throwing the box at me because I would've thrown it at myself. But I just want him to understand that I didn't hide it to be malicious. I hid it because I was scared to death and didn't know how to tell him."

"Give him a while, Jo. The wound is still fresh. The sting of the fact that you didn't tell him is still there. Give him a while. He'll come around. He knows that you weren't doing it to be spiteful and all this 'depriving him of his rights as a father' is bullshit. It's just a ploy to make you feel bad about the fact that you didn't tell him. And all that talk about him calling you stupid, throwing the box at you, telling you he hates you? That's part of his coping. That's all part of him dealing with the fact that you kept something like that from him. He didn't mean any of that. You just really gotta give him time to cool down. I bet that by tomorrow, he'll apologize and everything will go back to normal." The bartender sits another red drink in front of her and she scoots it over to her. "Did you apologize?"

"Only a million times already." I sigh.

"Then apologize a million more. He'll forgive you for it eventually." He holds the black straw to her mouth and takes a long sip of the fruity, alcoholic drink.

"I already know we're going to get through it. Alex and I fight all the time. We fight like it's nobody's business and we always get through it. I just don't want to keep hearing about it for the rest of the weekend. It's Friday and I know that I'm going to be hearing about it until at least Monday. I just wish he'd shut up about it because I already feel bad enough but I already know that he's not going to. I already know that I'm going to hear it when I get home—even if it's late. I'm going to hear it when I get home, tomorrow morning at breakfast, the day after that…I'm just never going to hear the end about how he can't trust me. I already feel bad about it so he doesn't need to keep reiterating it to me. I just want him to shut up and move on but it's Alex we're talking about." I start messing with the dark green coaster that my now completely watered down drink is sitting on. "I'll have to hear about it from now until the end of time because he doesn't let anything go."

"…So forget about it for a couple hours." She reaches over in my area and nudges my watered down drink towards the bartender. She swipes the straw out of the drink that I didn't even sip, plucks the straw out of the strawberry daiquiri that she took a couple sips of and slides it in front of me. "We're forgetting about everything. We're forgetting about men, babies, working…just everything." She plants my straw into the frosty, slush-like drink that's now in front of me and smiles. "Forget about it for a couple hours and have a drink."

I look at her and smirk, purely out of nervousness. I don't want to be rude and reject her drink offer. It'd be rude if I rejected it after she already paid for it and made the effort to give it to me. And if I decline it, she might think that I have an issue with drinking off her which isn't necessarily the case. I just don't know if I should. I haven't had anything to drink in a little less than a year. What if I drink and can't handle it? I've been sober for an entire year, just about. What if I take a sip and automatically get sick because I can't stand the taste? Or worse, what if I like it? I bite down on my lip and slowly ease the glass of daiquiri toward me. I lean my face down, wrap my lips around the straw and take a small sip. I can taste the alcohol in it already; strong and potent. It tastes like strawberries but the alcohol is overwhelming. It burns going down my throat and leaves a strong aftertaste that makes me rub my tongue along the roof of my mouth to deal with it. I lick my lips. I close my eyes and take another sip and I didn't realize how thirsty I was. Before I know it, I've sucked down the entire thing. "Ouch." I mumble, clamping my hand on my temple. "Brain freeze."

"Geez, Jo…like daiquiris much?" She says, concealing a laugh under her breath. I just nod my head, still trying to recover from the headache I've got from drinking the frozen drink too fast. "Did you taste it when you sucked it down like that?" I nod again, trying not to laugh because laughing would make my headache worse. "Two more." She holds two fingers up to the bartender and starts laughing at me.

Two more…

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

Carefully, I scoot my laptop over and slide it up so I can see the screen better. I have to be careful so I don't disturb the four year old that passed out in a candy coma right on my chest. Thankfully, Jo's out of my sight. She wasn't supposed to leave until 11:30 but she left out of here with one of her friends around 9:30 instead because we couldn't stand each other after having that fight. I didn't realize how much I really wouldn't mind having another child with her until the results on the test came back negative. After three minutes, I was the one that checked the results on the test because she was crying too hard to do it herself. I checked it, it said very clearly, "NOT PREGNANT" and that was the end of it. We both rejoiced over the fact that she's not pregnant because honestly, it's a blessing that she's not. We didn't need to throw a baby in the middle of all of this right now when we're just now learning the ropes of our own relationship. Jo and I love each other but we're not ready to become parents with each other and we both know that so the fact that she's not pregnant truly is a blessing. I couldn't help but feel a little bit of disappointment upon reading the results though. About 90% of my feelings were happiness and relief and the other 10% was slight disappointment because I know that if Jo and I did have a baby together, we'd make it work. I wouldn't mind having a baby with her. After the results of the test, we just started arguing again. She wiped herself and got up off the toilet and she tried to hug me. I did hug her back, but I had to tell her that I was still a little bit pissed off that she didn't tell me and even more so pissed off at the fact that she thought it would be okay to go out and get pissy drunk with my potential child inside of her. She asked me to understand her point of view and I told her that I could never understand what kind of mother would drink when she thinks that she might be pregnant and we argued for another half hour over that.

I love Jo to pieces, I really truly do. I'd do anything in this world for that woman but I came so very close to actually putting my hands on her today, which is only something I even THINK about doing to women when I'm pissed off beyond my breaking point. I don't even think about hitting women. I can't stand women beaters and hitting women hardly even ever crosses my mind; no matter how pissed off I get. But good god, I came so close to slapping Jo earlier. She asked me to understand where she was coming from as she considered DRINKING when she didn't even know if she was or wasn't pregnant for sure. She was acting like a fucking idiot and there's no way around it. She was willing to risk MY child's life without a thought. I wanted to slap the hell out of her but I didn't. Thankfully, she left the house. I'm so glad she left because I really, truly needed a break from her. I still love her. That's still my babe or whatever, but she really pissed me off and I'm glad she left. I think we both just needed a break from each other.

After Jo left, my dad did too. I threw some chicken tenders and french fries in the oven for me and Lyla and I took her upstairs. I washed all the makeup off her face and the chalk out of her hair and the perfect way for me to calm down after having such a heated argument with Jo was to chill out on the couch with the only person in the world that never makes me want to do things out of character like hit women and throw pink cardboard boxes. We ate our dinner in front of the TV watching "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" and the two of us dined on candy and watched some movie called Hocus Pocus until she fell asleep with a lollipop hanging out of her mouth and a mini Snickers bar melting in her hand. She's sitting on the couch right beside me, but her body is turned so that all her weight is on me and her head is smashed in my chest in the space between my pecks and my armpit. I didn't want to move and wake her up, so I just turned the channel to watch the fourth or fifth installment of that Halloween movie and I've been on my laptop for a few hours too.

For the last two hours or so, I've been looking at houses around Millerton for sale. Like I said, I'm pissed off at Jo right now but I'll still do anything in this world for her and that includes buying a house more suitable for her. I haven't really found anything that's good for us though. I found a couple houses in Millerton but all of them are two floors. I don't want a house with steps. I want everything to be level, on one floor so that Jo doesn't have to climb up steps. She never really did tell me too many details about the injuries she sustained in her accident. I know that she shattered her pelvis and I know that she has metal plates and screws in there but I don't know what kind of fracture she had in her pelvis. I don't know if they used titanium plates and screws or if they used an artificial type of metal because some cheaper hospitals do that. If they used artificial metal, she'll have to have another hip replacement surgery in about six or seven years and after two replacement surgeries, she won't be able to move very well. Even if they used titanium, her mobility is still going to be pretty limited as she gets older. She doesn't move very well as it is right now, but it's only going to get worse as she gets older and I just really want her to have everything on one floor because she is so independent. It'll make everything easier for her if she didn't have to carry baskets of clothes down a flight of steps to a washing machine and a dryer and it would be easier for her if she didn't have to lug bags of groceries up steps to get into the house. I want everything on one floor, no steps at all.

I scroll down to the search bar at the bottom of the browsing page and click "refine search". I type "Pensacola" into the city section as opposed to Millerton and hit "search". I didn't really want to move out of Millerton, being that my dad lives here and I'm used to everything around here but moving to Pensacola wouldn't be so bad. My dad would only be a few minutes away and I'd be closer to my job. Lyla could still stay in preschool at the YMCA—we'd just have to get up a little earlier to take her and if Jo's really going to start this job, she'll be closer to the school up there in Pensacola too. I scroll past houses that have two floors and eventually make it to the section of one floor houses. I click on the first decent looking one I find. It has three bedrooms and two bathrooms, which is exactly what we have here. We always kept the third bedroom available in case we decided to have more kids but after Jenna got sick, we just started storing junk in there. If we get a new house with a third bedroom, I could turn the extra room into an office for Jo if she'd want it to be that. She's going back to school to be an actuary and when she becomes an actuary, she's going to need an office space so she can do a few jobs from home since actuary science requires some at home work. I click on pictures of the house and scroll through those too.

It looks like a nice house. It has a two-car garage, a fenced in yard, which is good because I'm still thinking about getting Ly a dog; maybe for Christmas. The price is a little steep at $290,000 but I could probably swing it if the owner would let me make payments on it. I could pay for the house in cash but I don't want to do that so I'd take out a loan through my bank. I'd rather pay the loan back than pay for the house flat out. Maybe after I fully calm down and completely stop being pissed at Jo, I can talk her into going house hunting with me. I already know that she's going to tell me that she doesn't want me to spend money on buying a house just because she can't handle the steps but I'm going to tell her flat out that she's not the only reason I want to move. Sure her being slightly disabled has a lot to do with me wanting to move to a different house but that's not the only reason. I think moving would be good for morale. Moving out of the house that I once shared with Jenna into a new one that I can share with Jo seems like the way to go. Because this house…it doesn't really feel like home anymore.

When I lived in it after Jenna died, it still felt like my house. It felt like the place I come home to and the place I couldn't wait to be after a long day at work. It felt like my home and it didn't feel so unnatural to be in here. But ever since Jo moved in, it hasn't felt like home anymore. It feels like the place I used to live with my dead wife. It feels like four walls and a roof that I play house with my girlfriend in. No matter how many times I sleep in that bedroom with Jo, it'll always be the bedroom I shared with Jenna. No matter how many times I come home and see Jo in my kitchen fixing dinner, it'll always be the kitchen that Jenna used to cook in and the kitchen table that we used to sit at. No matter how many times I have sex with Jo in the shower, it'll always be the shower I had sex with Jenna in. It just doesn't feel like home anymore. I feel like being with Jo is a fresh start and I feel like we deserve a house that we can make memories in together and even if she doesn't go house hunting with me, I'm still going to buy a new house for us to live in because I don't think I can continue living in this one.

I bookmark the house I'm currently looking at and sigh. I'm still mad at her but dammit, I miss her. That's the problem with Jo. I can't stay mad at her for too long. I'll be pissed off at her one minute, thinking about hitting her the next and then when she's gone, I miss her. I miss her and I hope she comes home soon. I want her to come home not only because I miss her but also because I won't be able to sleep without her. If I go lie down right now without her in bed next to me, I'll toss and turn until she's in the bed with me and then I'll finally be able to go to sleep. I can't sleep without her. Was I too hard on her earlier? For forcing her against the wall? For throwing the box at her? I didn't mean to hit her with the box and it's not like I beamed it at her with the intention of causing her bodily harm, but still. I threw it at her and it hit her in her knee. And I forced her against the wall and I screamed in her face and made her cry. Was I too hard on her? She was scared… I can understand that she was scared. I _did_ put it in her head that I wouldn't want another baby. Still, that doesn't give her the right to go out and drink knowing that she might be pregnant. But I could've tried to understand her feelings better. She apologized to me a bunch of times. I forgive her…I can't forget, but I do forgive her. I could've been more understanding. How I reacted was probably the exact reason she was scared to even tell me. I think I was too hard on her.

Still careful not to disturb Lyla, I close my laptop and lean forward so I can grab my cell phone. I don't know if she and her friend still went out for drinks or if they changed their plans but I still want to see if maybe she'll answer her phone. I just want to call her and tell her that I love her. I didn't tell her that at all today and after our argument, after me throwing a box at her and backing her into a corner, I think maybe she needs to be reminded that I do. I don't want her to think that I don't. I slide my finger across my phone to unlock it and go straight to her contact. I tap on the "call" button and hold the phone to my ear. It rings a few times before going to her voicemail, which makes me sigh but I don't hang up. After the beep, I softly clear my throat. "…Hey. You don't have to call me back when you get this, I just wanted to hear your voice. Look, I love you. I just wanted you to know that." I clear my throat again. "I'll see you when you get home." I end the call and stare blankly at the TV, just thinking. She's probably having fun at a bar with her friend or at a movie or something but either way it goes, she's out there with her friend and having fun, which makes me happy. I blink my eyes out of staring and finally tune back into the movie that's been playing in the background for a while now.

I slowly reach over into the pillowcase of candy that's sitting in the empty space between my legs and Lyla's legs and grab a piece of chocolate. I pop open the wrapper and shovel yet another piece of candy into my mouth.

* * *

 **Jo's Point of View.**

"Are you sure you're okay to drive home?" I unbuckle my seatbelt and look over in the driver's seat at Steph. If I had to use my own judgment, I'd say that she's alright enough to drive herself home. She got me home from the bar safely so I think she can drive herself home safely but I still just want to check and make sure she really is okay. Neither one of us are nearly as shitfaced as I thought we were going to be. When I first tasted that daiquiri after going so long without even so much as sniffing alcohol, I thought I was going to lose it. I thought I was going to chug down daiquiri after daiquiri after daiquiri but to my surprise, I didn't. I had three, spaced out over about two hours and that was it for me. I am a little bit buzzed to the point where I want to laugh at everything and if someone asked me to walk in a straight line, I probably wouldn't be able to do it but I'm not as bad as I can be. I'm actually pretty okay. "Alright…text me and let me know that you got home okay." I open up the passenger's side door and climb out of her SUV. I wave at her and watch her car until it disappears.

I hiccup and cover my mouth as a belch comes out. Who am I kidding? I'm pretty much wasted. I really did only have three daiquiris but I'm pretty sure I had like…two shots of Tequila or something like that. I'm so wasted. I can still think pretty straight but I'm staggering a little bit. Still, I'm not as bad as I was that night I caused the accident. That night, I couldn't even think straight. I didn't know where I was, what I was doing…I was fucked up that night and I'm not as fucked up now as I was then. I stumble up the steps and make it to the front door even though the porch is kind of blurry. I rest my forehead against the glass window on the front of the door and close my eyes. I slam my open hand against the door before I realize that I need to close it and make it into a fist if somebody's going to hear me. I bawl my hand up in a fist and smack it against the door twice. I'm going to puke. On the bright side, I'm too messed up to care that Alex is about to bitch me out again when I walk through the door. I'm too drunk to even care that he's going to yell and hopefully I'm too drunk to even hear what he's going to say.

I'm so drunk right now. I need to get my ass up to a bed before I embarrass myself. I know what I'm thinking and I know where I am and I know what I'm doing. I'm fully cognizant and aware of what I'm doing but I'm also aware that I'm inebriated right now. I smack my fist against the door again and breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth. My hands wander all along my pockets to see if I can grab my cell phone so I can call him and tell him to come open the door. When I slip my hand into my back pocket, I come across my house keys instead of my phone, which makes me start uncontrollably laughing. I'm so drunk it's not even funny. And the fact that it's not funny makes me laugh even more. I fumble around with my keys, blinking to clear up my doubled vision and shove the wrong key into the lock. I pull it back out and shove the only other key on my keychain into the lock. I twist it and open up the door. I stumble into the house and as soon as I step foot into the kitchen, the light comes on. I drop my keys on the floor and look up.

Alex is standing in the doorway to the kitchen wearing nothing but a pair of loose-fitting boxer shorts. His hair is spiraling off in a million different directions and his eyes are low, as if he was sleeping or something. He just stands there, staring at me. I purse my lips together in a line and feel my face fall. My vision blurs again but not from drunkenness, from tears this time. I thought I was drunk enough to handle it if he starts yelling at me but seeing him just proved me wrong. I don't want him to yell at me. I just want him to stop being mad. I didn't mean to upset him. "…For what are you crying, Jo?" He mumbles in his rumbly, sleepy voice. He sounds annoyed with me and I know he's about to yell and I just can't do this. I bring my hand up and cover my face and start whining like a big baby. "What the hell is the matter with you?" He walks over to me and I just start crying so hard. "What is your problem?" He puts his hands on my shoulders and forces me to look at him. I literally throw my head back and start wailing. See, this is why I needed to just go to bed. I'm embarrassing the hell out of myself. "Jo, WHAT is wrong with you?!"

"…I'm so drunk." I sniff and start trembling. "I'm…so drunk." He snickers and holds back laughter, which almost causes him to spit on me. "What's funny?" I sniff again. "'I'm drunk."

"Come on." Still laughing at me, he bends his knees and picks me up. He tosses me over his shoulder and holds onto the bottom of my legs. "I can tell you're drunk..." He carries me through the living room and up the stairs. I just can't stop crying. "No wonder you don't drink. You don't need to. You turn into a big, whiny crybaby mess when you drink." He deposits me safely on the bed and turns on the light. I cover my eyes because the light is too harsh and flop down on a pillow. He starts unbuttoning my jeans and taking them off and I'm still just laying on the pillow and crying. I can't believe I'm crying like this. I cry when I'm drunk though. It's just something that happens. When I'm drunk, the littlest things set me off and I just start bawling my eyes out. Seeing him standing in the kitchen the way he was just made me start crying and I hate myself for it and I can't stop now. "Do you need to puke?" I shake my head and whine. "Lift up." He mumbles and lifts me up on his own. He takes my shirt off too and lays me back down on the pillow. "You just wanna go to bed?" I nod my head. "You're so fucked up, Jo." He laughs at me again and starts to take off my socks next. I snatch my feet away from him though. "You wanna leave the socks on?" I shake my head. "Then lemme take 'em off." He holds my foot still and grabs the rim of my sock, which makes me pull my foot away again. "Fine, I'll leave them."

"They're my socks! I just wanna keep my socks on…why are you trying to take my socks from me?" I curl up into a ball and just lay in the bed. "Leave my socks alone. You already took my pants and my…my shirt. Why you gotta take my socks too?" He starts to laugh harder. "Don't laugh at me. Those are my socks." I sit up even though the room is spinning and turn in the direction I think he's in. I can't see. Everything is just pitch black. "You're always trying to take something from me. Leave my socks alone Alex. They're my socks." I just hear him snickering but I can't see him. "I can't see…I can't see." I flop back down on the pillow and just bawl my eyes out. "I can't see and you're laughing at me and you're trying to take my socks and I'm blind and I can't see. I can't see… I can't see."

"Then open your eyes, Jo." I feel his hand against my cheek. "Open your eyes if you can't see."

"No, they're open…I swear they're open I just can't see. I'm blind." I shake my head. "They're open."

"Open your damn eyes, you fool." He pulls my eyelid down and all of a sudden, I can see again. I need to go to bed. I really need to go to bed. I'm so fucked up. He shakes his head at me. "You're a mess. Can I take your socks off so you can go to bed, Jo?"

"My name's not Jo." I bury my face in the pillow and hiccup. "It's Josephine."

"…Well can I take your socks off, Josephine?"

"…It's Queen Josephine to you." What am I even saying? Oh my god, just let me go to bed!

"Can I take your socks off, Queen Josephine?" He rephrases his question. I nod my head since he asked properly. It's like…I know that I'm fucked up right now and I know that everything coming out of my mouth right now is bullshit but I can't stop saying bullshit. He takes my socks off and that makes me start wailing again.

"You took my socks…"

"You said I could."

"No I didn't…why'd you take my socks?"

"Oh, Jo….what am I gonna do with you?" He slips my feet underneath the covers and pulls the blankets up to my chest. "You're never drinking again…that's it for you. You're not drinking again until our wedding day." He turns off the light and climbs in the bed with me. "Come here, Queen Josephine. Come here." He grabs my hand and I swat him away. "Come lay down on me. I'm a pillow, okay? Come lay on me."

"….This mean you're not mad at me?" I lay down on his chest and sniff. "You still love me? You're not mad?"

"We'll talk about this in the morning, Jo."

* * *

 **A/N:** If you're interested in helping me choose which story to do for my next multichapter story, you can go check out the first preview I released at flawlesspeasant . tumblr / Prompt-One. I didn't want to post it on here, for several reasons so I just put it on my tumblr instead.

You can leave me feedback on here or on tumblr, it doesn't really matter. The second preview of the other story should be up sometime this week as well.


	67. Not Strong Enough Yet

**A/N:** Sorry for the little hiatus. I'll explain everything at the end of the chapter, so just enjoy.

* * *

"I was looking at this one…" He double clicks the mousepad of his laptop and brings up yet another picture of a house so beautiful that I've only ever seen something like it in my dreams. "But there's a lot of grass to cut in this yard and I don't always have the time to cut the grass, especially while I'm working and I don't expect you to push around a lawn mower…I'll never let you mow the lawn." I clench my jaw together to help myself power through the almost unbearable headache I've got. Apparently, I was pretty fucked up last night. I don't remember anything that happened after I got out of the car when Steph dropped me off at home. I don't remember how I got into the house, I don't remember how I got undressed and I don't even remember falling asleep. I know that I was so messed up that Alex had to help me; that's pretty solid but I don't remember how truly messed up I was last night. When I woke up half an hour ago, I found that I was in my bra, my underwear and I was tucked away neatly underneath the covers. The way I was undressed and put to bed lets me know that I was pretty bad off to a certain extent last night, but I was halfway expecting Alex to just let me pass out in a pool of my own vomit. I wasn't expecting him to help me the way he apparently did. He clears his throat and clicks on the "page down" arrow to take us to another page full of houses. "So I was looking at this one too. This one's nice, isn't it? It's in Pensacola but that's alright, isn't it? You're about to get a job in Pensacola anyway and I already work there so Pensacola isn't that bad." He pulls up a picture of a house and although I'm following everything he's doing, I'm so hopelessly confused.

First of all, I don't know why he's being so nice to me. Not that Alex isn't generally nice to me because he is; I'm just confused because when I left the house last night, we were on horrible terms. I'm guessing that something that I don't remember happened when I got home last night because the last thing I remember is him screaming at me and throwing a cardboard box at my kneecap. The last I remember of our interactions last night, he was screaming at me and we were fighting like cats and dogs, yet he's been so nice to me this morning already. When I woke up, Lyla was already fed, entertained and back down for a nap and he was laying in the bed right next to me, typing away on his laptop. Granted, I did wake up pretty late at a cringe-worthy 1:00 in the afternoon, but still, I'm usually the one to feed her, play with her for a little while and put her back to bed. As soon as Alex saw me pick my head up off the pillow, he told me to lay on him…so I did. I put my head right on his chest and since then, we've been looking at houses together…err, he's been looking and I've been battling this nasty hangover. "Why are you looking at houses again?" I close my eyes and take a moment to regroup. My head is pounding, I'm sick to my stomach and my chest is burning. I'm never drinking like that again. I didn't think I was that messed up but I guess I was. "Are you trying to buy one?" I open up only one of my eyes and look up at him. He nods his head and patiently drums his fingertips along his laptop while he waits for the picture of the house to pop up. "…Why? You already have a house." I mumble.

"Don't you think we deserve our own one though?" Like he's been doing ever since I woke up, he presses his lips to my temple and rubs my bare shoulder blade. I should probably get up and take a shower and wash this liquor off of me. I'm still wearing my lacy black bra and the matching underwear but that's only because I can't bring myself to get out of the bed. Right now, I feel like if I get out of this bed, I'm going to blow chunks all over the place. "Think about it, Jo…we're living in a house that I shared with my dead wife. That doesn't strike you as odd?" I shake my head and close my eyes again. This hangover is kicking my ass. "Well I dunno…" He shrugs his shoulders and makes my head fall a little bit but I readjust myself. "It bothers me, sort of. It bothers me that I'm in a house with my girlfriend that I bought with my wife…sorry, it just bothers me a bit. I think we deserve our own house and it's not like I'm not able to get us one." He turns his head and looks down at me. "Plus, I wanna get a place where you don't have to worry about steps."

"Alex, I'm _fine._ " I keep my eyes closed. "Really, you don't have to worry about me. I'm fine with the steps here and I'll continue to be fine. I don't need a one floor house…I'm not disabled." So that's why he wants to buy a house. Something tells me that it has nothing to do with the fact that his ex-wife used to live here because we've been living together for months now and he's never had a problem with it. I knew this had to come from somewhere because nobody just randomly thinks about buying a house out of the clear blue. He probably saw me struggling to get down the steps yesterday before I left out to go with Steph and that's why he suddenly wants a new house. I admit that it would be much, much easier for me to be mobile and get around if everything was on one floor because lately, steps have been bothering the hell out of my hips but he really doesn't need to buy an accessible house for me. I'm not handicapped. "You can't just…" I open my eyes and groan when I find that my head is still pounding. Despite the fact that I'm severely hungover right now, I have to admit that I feel so much better. I was so tired for a while there but after knocking out in a drunken stupor and sleeping until one in the afternoon, I feel so much better. "Buy a house without thinking about it. You can't do something like this on impulse…especially if it's not needed."

"Jo, are you really about to tell me that you wouldn't rather have a house closer to your job once you start it? You start next week." He runs his fingers through my hair and smooths it back. "And you know it would be easier for you if you had everything on one floor. You could carry laundry baskets easier, it would be easier for you to handle Lyla in the mornings. The only thing that would be a little bit of a challenge is getting you back and forth to classes but you have a car so it shouldn't be that bad. It would be so much easier for you to have everything on one floor and you know it would be." He kisses the middle of my forehead.

I can't take this anymore. I think something happened last night and I don't even know what it was. Something happened and I don't remember what it was and that attributed to him being so nice to me. I really need to know what happened last night because I don't know if I made empty promises, made a fool of myself…I just don't know. The only things I do know is what he told me about. Apparently I started to cry out of nowhere, I yelled at him for taking off my socks and I asked him to call me "Queen Josephine." But that's all I know. "…Why are you being so nice to me?" I turn my head and look up at him too. "I thought we hated each other…why are you being so nice all of a sudden?"

"Because loving you is easier than hating you." He mumbles and looks away from me and back at his laptop screen. "Don't think I'm not still pissed off at you for what you did yesterday, Jo…because I am. I'm still pissed. But I forgive you." He won't even look at me while he talks about it, which is how I know that I've apparently hurt him pretty badly. I still feel really bad for what happened last night but I still don't think he really heard what I was trying to say. I wasn't trying to hurt him and I surely wasn't trying to hurt our potential unborn baby, I just wasn't in my right state of mind. I wasn't thinking clearly. I was scared, nervous, completely out of my mind…I just wasn't thinking and I wasn't trying to hurt anybody, I was just scared out of my wits. I acknowledge the fact that he has the right to be mad at me though. "Anyway, I kind of just wish you'd help me pick out a house." He sighs and turns the laptop screen so that I can see it too. I sit up and support my weight on my elbow so I can look at the screen right along with him. "…And for the record, Jo…" The tone of his voice is much more serious. "When I said I didn't want more kids…I didn't really mean it." He cheek bulges outward when he slips his tongue in it. "Of course I'd want our baby…" He mumbles that last part.

He would? He'd want another baby with…with me? So when he said that he didn't want another baby, did he mean that he didn't want just any baby? Did he mean that he wanted another baby with me? Because I'm only 29. I'm still young and my entire life is ahead of me and I mean…of course I want to have my own children. I'll be fine if I never get that chance and if it can't happen for me, I won't be all that disappointed but of course I would welcome my own child with open arms. I would love to have Alex's baby. Not right now of course, but years down the line if it's ever possible for me to carry it and have it. So he really would? He would want another baby with me? Is that really part of the reason he wants to move? Because he wants to start a family with me eventually and he doesn't feel like he can do that while living in the house that he had a family with another woman in? Letting a slight smile spread across my lips, I drape my arm across his waist and look at houses with him. "…That's a really nice one. It says it has three bedrooms and two bathrooms? How much would the mortgage be? Because I can't really see us paying an absurd amount of money for a three bedroom house when we really only need two bedrooms…"

"We can use a three bedroom house though." He enlarges the photo and I have to admit that I'm a little taken aback by how gorgeous it is. It's light brown with a nice fenced-in yard. There are two garage doors and the front porch is very spacious, the front door is wooden and it's just…a really pretty house. "You're going back to school and once you're an actuary, you might need an office." He clicks the next picture and waits for it to load. "And if you don't need it to be an office, it could be…." His voice trails off. "I'm just sure that we could find some use for a third bedroom…somewhere down the line."

"…Alex, do you want more kids?" I ask him flat out because that seems to be the best way to go. Between the two of us, we always seem to beat around the bush when it comes to talking about our future and so far, that seems to get us nowhere but screaming at each other in bathrooms over possible pregnancies so we need to talk about this instead of procrastinating. "You're 30 and I'm 29, we're both still young and I know it's not something we should be talking about in this stage of our relationship but that's the thing. We're both still young and you can be totally honest with me because I don't want whatever just happened last night to ever happen again. So we have to sit down and talk about this. Babies go in bedrooms, Alex. You know this. So if we get a three bedroom house, are you anticipating babies? More babies?"

"…I would like to, yes." He sounds as if this is the first time he's admitted it to himself, much less to anyone else. "Eventually, I would like to have another child with you. But that doesn't necessarily mean w _ith_ you, Jo…I just mean WITH you. I'll be fine if we…adopt or something. I'd love to have our own someday but that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to. I'd like to adopt someday…" He sighs. "Yes, Jo…I want more kids."

"And so do I. I'm willing to adopt, maybe foster a kid…I don't know. But kids are definitely something I would like to have more of and I think Lyla would do well with a sibling." I push off the entire subject as if it's not a big deal because honestly, it's really not. I don't know why Alex and I made this talk such a big deal when it's really not. Sure it's way too early in our relationship to be discussing kids but just like my mom said; when you're grown enough to lie down with someone and have as much unprotected sex as Alex and I have, you have to be ready to discuss the possibilities of being parents. It's not a big deal. It's a conversation that people have to have in their relationships all the time—it just so happens that me and Alex's conversation is happening a little earlier. "So we should get a three bedroom…because if we ever do have kids, I'm only thinking one more." I put my finger on the mousepad and scroll over to the third picture of the house. "This could be perfect for us. It has a nice little laundry room..."

"Yeah and it has a fenced-in yard, which is good because I think I'll be getting a dog for Christmas." He clicks on an inside picture of one of the bedrooms. It has white carpet all over the house, which makes me nervous. Something about four year olds and white carpets don't mix. Add a puppy to that mix and the white carpet has no chance. "I've been thinking about a German Shepherd, but I don't know if I should go smaller for her first dog. Should I keep it small? I've been looking around online and they say that bigger dogs are better for younger children because they're sturdier, but I don't want something that's gonna bite her if she pulls it's tail. What do you think? It's either a German Shepherd, a Golden Retriever, a Bulldog or a…a wiener dog. I'm not getting her anything else besides one of those four."

"A think a German Shepherd would be nice. No to Golden Retriever because they shed too much, I've heard that Bulldogs are mean…a wiener dog could be cute. They're called Dachshunds though." I trace slight circles around his bellybutton with my finger just because I can. I like touching Alex just because I can. "You should try rescuing one instead of getting it from a breeder. It's always better to give puppies good homes…instead of taking a puppy with an already good home. I think we should just go to the shelter a few days before Christmas and look around…yeah?" He nods his head and keeps scrolling through the pictures of the house. "…Okay, if we move to Pensacola…are we going to be looking for a different preschool for Lyla? Or are we keeping her in this one?"

"We can keep her in this school. We'll just have to get up earlier and take her. I mapped out this house though, and it's only like 15 minutes away from here so it's not that bad. It'll just be a lot of backtracking because basically, we'll have to drive her to Millerton for preschool and drive back to Pensacola for work but like I said, it's probably more worth it in the end if we both have jobs in Pensacola. She'd be going to kindergarten in Pensacola though so the whole backtracking thing would only be an issue for the rest of this year. It wouldn't be an issue next year…and maybe we could let her ride the bus next year." He sighs and looks around. "I don't know, Jo…I just really want to get the hell out of this house. Not only for you, but for me too. This house doesn't feel like my home anymore…you know? It just feels weird."

"I understand that, baby." I graze my fingertips along the skin on his stomach. "I know it must be hard for you to live here when everything bad that ever happened to you happened in this house. A change of scenery probably wouldn't be so bad." I pull the laptop a little closer. "So is this the one you wanna go for?" I start scrolling through the pictures too. It truly is a beautiful house. The exterior is made of a light brown siding material and the foundation it sits atop is made of bricks that are various shades of light brown, black, dark brown and red. The grass is really green and there are a couple short palm trees scattered about. The porch has a roof over it that's being held up by tan pillars and the garage doors are tan as well. There's a neatly paved concrete driveway and a concrete walkway that leads right up to a flight of two bricked steps that lead onto the porch. The carpets on the inside are all white and they look plush but the kitchen has red walls with the same bricks that the foundation is made of on one wall. In the kitchen, there are all steel appliances and an island that's dead in the center. The living room has a bricked fireplace and there's a laundry room with white walls and brown linoleum floors. One of the bedrooms has a master bathroom in it and the other bathroom is next to the living room. The backyard is large and fenced-in as well, big enough for a pool. It's a gorgeous house. It's perfect. It's very nice but it's not too flashy. It's homely. "It's nice. It says it's in a nice neighborhood, nice town…"

"Yeah, I think this is the one we're gonna go for. I'll call for it in a minute, see what the realtor's offering." He clicks on the "more information" option and grabs his phone off the nightstand next to him. "I'm gonna see about getting a loan and stuff…I'd like to move in soon…you know, before winter and so we can live there for Christmas if we're gonna be getting this dog. I'd like to be all moved in by Thanksgiving so I want this to go as quickly as possible."

"…Thanksgiving?" I tilt my head up and look at him again. "…What do you guys usually do for that?"

"Nothing, really. Jenna used to bake and stuff and we'd have my dad and stuff come over but that's mostly it." He shrugs his shoulders. "Why?"

"Because Thanksgiving last year for me was a disaster. I was thinking maybe I could do something special you know…since I actually have something to be thankful for this year." Last year, I spent my Thanksgiving in a hospital bed, hooked up to IVs and monitors, still grieving the loss of my husband and my kid. Last year's Thanksgiving was shitty. This year's Thanksgiving, I'll be both happy and sad. Happy because I have my new boyfriend and my pseudo-stepdaughter to be thankful for, but also sad because it'll be marking a year since Mark's been gone and a year since my life changed forever. "I could try to cook something and your dad and Michelle can come over…and maybe I can call my mom and see if she could come down. I don't know…I just kind of want to do something special this year…"

"I'd like that too." He strokes my hair back again. "I spent my holiday last year planning a funeral. Wasn't much for me to be thankful for either." He sighs. "…Wait, can you actually cook a turkey?"

"…I could try."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

"Daddy, can we take my TV to my new room too?" She taps me on my shoulder while I continue to shove little knick-knacks in the back of my closet into a box. I've been stagnant in one place for so long that I forgot just how much work moving truly is. I forgot about all the packing that goes into it, driving around, renovating, buying new things…moving is a hell of a lot of work and I forgot because well, I haven't moved in a while. I've lived in this house for years…it's kind of surreal to know that I'm finally getting the hell out of here but at the same time, it's unnerving to know that I'm really about to leave it for good. All the good memories I have in this house that I made with Jenna…coming back here from our honeymoon, bringing Lyla home from the hospital…I'm leaving all of these memories behind but hopefully, I'll be making tons of new memories with Jo in our new house. "And my books?" She keeps tapping me and she's going to keep tapping me until I answer her.

She doesn't quite get the concept of moving. She thinks we're packing up and we're leaving but she thinks that the things we haven't packed up yet are getting left behind. Every day, she's been asking me if we can take another one of her items that we haven't packed up yet and every day, I tell her the same thing: that nothing is getting left behind. When Jo and I initially told her about the move, she started crying. She thought we were leaving everything she owned behind; even though Jo and I both explained to her that we were just changing houses. It took a promise from Jo that we would paint her new room pink and a promise from me that we'll get a pool in our new yard for her to finally be okay with moving. "Yeah, booger. We're gonna take your TV and your books to your new room." I shove some of my old documents that were stuffed on the top shelf of my closet into the box and keep looking around for anything that I might've missed. Jo's downstairs packing up the living room. We've been packing for the last week and a half and we still have yet to take Lyla to see what we have done of the new house. Before we even started moving boxes in, Jo had spent a lot of time alone up in that house while I was at work. She got Lyla's room painted pink, our room painted a chocolate brown color and the kitchen wall painted red. She started her teaching job last week so she hasn't really been able to spend more time there but every night, we drop Lyla off with my dad and we spend some time setting things up without her to get in the way. If I had to guess, I'd say the house will be ready to be moved into by next week. We'll be all set by then, I believe and we should be able to spend Thanksgiving in our new house. Terri's flying down for Thanksgiving. She wasn't going to be able to at first because she couldn't really swing it with the money situation, but Jo was very upset so I offered to pay for her mom's ticket and we're going to let her stay at our house for two days. "Why don't you go see if mommy needs help down in the living room? See if she needs you to help her pack up."

"Kay." She turns around and leaves out of the room. I've already got three offers on this house because I'm selling it independently but I don't know how serious any of the offers are. I'm selling it for $130,000 and I got one offer for $135,000 and another for $140,000. Honestly, the house isn't worth that much but however much they're willing to keep going up? I'm fine with it. Things between me and Jo have been practically flawless since our little squabble about her possibly being pregnant three weeks ago. I think we both just understand where we stand as far as our future together goes. We want more children. She wants one more and so do I and we're both in agreeance that we don't care how we get it. I think we might end up adopting eventually but it would really be something if we could have our own somewhere down the line after we eventually get married and stuff. Admittedly so, I really thought that things might've fallen apart after Jo started her new job but it's all been working out pretty nicely. Jo gets up around 5:30 every morning and she gets herself ready. She helps me get Lyla's things ready but she leaves the house at 6:30 every morning to be at work up in Pensacola by7:15. Arizona stuck me on a steady 8:30-5:00 schedule so I'm the one that fixes Lyla up in the morning and takes her to school. Jo gets off of work at 2:20 every day so she's the one that picks Lyla up and from there on out, everything is normal. She'll come home and cook dinner and sit with Lyla and when I get home, she'll study for a little bit. She started classes a few days ago and she's been doing well with it so far. We have a nice little routine going…Lyla's hair hasn't been as cute as it usually is when Jo's the one that's doing it in the mornings, but I make an effort and I can put in a mean ponytail and a pretty nice french braid when she sits still long enough for me to do it.

I wrap my hands around a cardboard box that's sitting on the top shelf and slide it down so I can sort through it and decide what I need and don't need. I sit the box down neatly on the floor and kneel down so I can sift through it with my hands. It looks like just a bunch of junk. Mostly my medical school books, a few folders…an envelope that I refuse to open. I pick up the large yellow envelope and sit down flat on my butt. I know exactly what's in this envelope because I helped but the contents inside, I helped seal it and I'm the one that stuck it up here in the box. I never wanted to open it though. I never thought I'd be strong enough to open it. I slip my finger up underneath the slot and peel it upward. With my teeth clenched down on my bottom lip, I overturn the envelope and watch as the dozens of smaller white envelopes spill out; all of them with Jenna's handwriting in the center. All of them have "To Lyla" written on them but they're color coded and each colorful label has a subtitle. I gloss over a few of them and read a couple. _To Lyla: When you become a woman. To Lyla: When you start middle school. To Lyla: When you start high school. To Lyla: When you graduate high school. To Lyla: On your wedding day. To Lyla: Your first heartbreak. To Lyla: Applying for college._ There are a bunch of letters here, letters that I never wanted to see again, letters that I practically already know what is written due to the fact that I helped her write them when she was too weak and letters that make me want to cry when I think about the reason she had to write them. She knew her time was coming and during that last week of her life, she spent every waking moment writing these letters to Lyla.

I swallow a lump in my throat, sigh and start shoving the letters back into the yellow envelope so I can pack better them neatly away in the box I've been packing for the last ten minutes. When I catch a glimpse of one letter, I pause. I feel like someone punched me in the stomach. I thought for sure that I knew every letter that was in that envelope. I packed the envelope, I tucked it away and I read each and every subtitle on the white envelopes. I know all of these letters. I've seen all of these letters. So imagine my surprise when I see one that I actually don't recognize. I don't think I'm going to ever be strong enough to open this one. But I pick it up. And I read over it with my eyes; her elegantly neat handwriting with a messily scribbled heart. _For Alex: Whenever you're ready._

I'm not ready, so I just put it back in the yellow envelope instead.

* * *

 **This is a little bit long and you don't have to read it, but it's kind of essential if you want to know what's going on with my future stories and whatnot.**

 **A/N:** So recently, I've been pretty busy with getting ready for college and whatnot, that's why I haven't been able to update as often. The days I took off without updating kind of hurt the story a little bit, so I'm not going to be able to make this 70 chapters like I originally planned to. The next chapter will be the last chapter of this story and I promise that it'll be wrapped up. It's so easy for me to just abandon this story because I've lost a little bit of interest in it after not updating for a while, but I feel like I owe you guys a proper ending to this and I'm going to give you one. The next chapter will be the final chapter, but I think this story is a real candidate for a small sequel in the future. I'm upset that I have to end this story so abruptly and I anticipate that I, myself, will be wondering what happens to Alex, Jo and Lyla at the end of this story so I'd say it's very likely that there could be a sequel to this eventually. If there is a sequel, it'd only be a few chapters but it'd be something to catch you guys up and let you know if Alex and Jo ever got to adopt the baby they wanted to, or if they ever had their own. However, I do promise you guys that the ending to this story will tie up all loose ends and it will be beautiful. I promise you guys that.

With that being said, I've also made the executive decision to write the college story for my next fic, but I really don't know when I'll even be able to start it because I literally have no clue when I'm going to have the time to write. I chose the college story for many reasons, but the primary reason is because it'll require a lot less for me than the resident/intern one will and with the way I've mapped it out, I really think I can get that story done in 40 chapters; maybe less. I don't want to just throw together a resident/intern story-I want to make sure it'll be a really good one. So I'm going to wait for the show to come back and wait until I have more Jolex material to go off of before I attempt to write another resident/intern story. I'm just nervous that my attempt to write a resident/intern story will end up like my previous story, Just So You Know and I really don't want to risk hating another story of mine so WHEN I write another resident/intern story, I want to do it RIGHT this time. I don't feel like I can do it right when my time is going to be invested into adjusting to college and when the show is still on hiatus and not giving me any motivation. Plus, I think writing a college story will be easier for me since I'm actually going to be in college.

I don't mean to upset anyone that really wanted me to write the resident and intern one. In all honesty, I was kind of leaning towards writing the resident and intern one too, especially after I sat down and fleshed out some ideas for it. But I don't think I can do a good resident/intern story in my first semester of college and while the show is still on hiatus and I think I'm going to try and write the resident/intern one in third person instead of first person, which also requires me to have more time and practice. I need more time to be able to make it a really good one so it doesn't end up like me hating it like I did with JSYK. The college one is going to be easier for me and I hope you guys can understand that. I really do wholeheartedly promise that the story after the college one will be the resident/intern one I have planned and maybe...I'll start the resident/intern one while I'm doing the college one too. If I adjust fairly well to college, it might be possible for me to have two stories going at once.

So yeah, this is where I'm at. You can expect the first chapter of the college fic to be up fairly soon, because I already have it written-I just need to edit and add a few things to it. After the first chapter, however, I don't know when it'll be updated. :(

I hope you guys understand...and I'm sorry if I've disappointed you with any recent decisions.


	68. Belong To You Now

**A/N:** So this is the final chapter :( And even though I'm glad to be ending this story, I am very sad to see it go. I might've shed a tear or two while writing this last chapter, but it's here and it's beautiful just like I promised you guys it would be. I just want to say thank you to you guys that have stuck with me through this story. I really do love each and every one of you guys. And like I said I would, I left the door pretty much wide open for a sequel to this.

& If you haven't already, check out my new story "Over My Head". Chapter one is up and idk when chapter two might be up, but it's going to be a good story too.

Enjoy!

* * *

I tug open the flaps on one of the many cardboard boxes that are still scattered about our house. I have homework to do for my 5:00 class and I have no idea where my notebook is. My homework isn't due until Wednesday, which is two days from now but I don't have to work tomorrow due to it being Christmas week and I would like to finish officially unpacking tomorrow since I'm off. I need my notebook though. I haven't needed it in a while because the class I use it for is so easy that I can do all the calculations in my head, but I forget how to do something and now I need it. I know I put it in the box that's down in our bedroom but I haven't been able to find it. It's a little ridiculous that we've been in this house since the beginning of November and we still haven't unpacked all the way. I rummage through the box and pound my fist on the ground when I find that it's nothing but a bunch of pictures that were supposed to have been hung up on the walls already. Between my work schedule and Alex's work schedule, neither one of us have really felt like unpacking and setting up but I'm going to make sure it all gets taken care of tomorrow. My mom's flying down for Christmas in a few days like she did for Thanksgiving, and I can only imagine all the negative things she would have to say about our house if she walked in here to a sea of boxes yet again.

Honestly, I haven't really seen a reason to unpack. I mean yeah, everything would be a lot smoother if we were to take everything out of boxes and set up, but it's kind of pointless because we've been managing by living out of boxes. Everything is properly sorted out; all the boxes are in their respective rooms, they're just not unpacked because we do everything as needed. We take out plates and cups as needed, we use washcloths, towels and soap as needed and we take out our clothes as needed. The only room that's even remotely close to being unpacked is Lyla's room and that's only because we had to take all her toys out so she could play with them. I don't want to jinx anything but right now, I feel like the luckiest woman in the world. I didn't really believe Alex when he said that a new house would be good for morale, but I believe him now. I must admit that there was a piece of me that was particularly sad when we loaded up that U-Haul truck and said a permanent goodbye to Millerton and Pembroke Drive but I couldn't really bring myself to stay upset. It was upsetting because Millerton was the first place I wound up after hopping on that bus back in Chamberlain and Pembroke Drive is the exact neighborhood that lead me to all of this. Lead me to meeting the love of my life, lead me to meeting the most amazing four year old, lead me to this new life I have going on. But as I poked my head out of the window of my car and watched the neighborhood I once lived in disappear, I couldn't help but feel…liberated, in a sense. I was leaving the place where I began my new life only to wind up in another place where my life could continue to prosper.

Of course, I had to stop by The Hut before I left town. I promised Lucille and Luke that I would be back to visit them whenever it was possible for me to and I thanked Tony because without him, I don't know where I would've been. I came to Millerton with nothing but a duffle bag full of my belongings and he gave me a job when no one else would. So I'm thankful for that. I even said a proper goodbye to Mrs. Jensen and the dog, Gibby. She surprised me when she gave me a hug. I came to Millerton with nothing…and I left it with everything. Pensacola's been treating me well so far. There are so many more restaurant varieties here, so many more store options and gas is three cents cheaper. Not to mention, I really love my job. The students have all been pretty nice to me so far and to my surprise, nobody is failing my class. I was a little bit nervous at first about how I'd do as a teacher because the most I had ever done before taking this job was student teaching. It's the first time I've ever had to come up with lesson plans and grade papers and I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to make things understandable for my students when Statistics is as difficult as it is. But nobody's failing and everybody seems to be energetic when they come to my class, which is kind of a big deal; especially when you're dealing with high schoolers.

My first week, things were a little bit rough as I was settling in. A few of the senior boys would stare at me and make snide comments about my looks...and I guess I was alright with it but I kind of felt like the only reason they wanted to come to my class was to look at me. It wasn't that long ago that I was in high school myself and I remember what it was like to want to go to the hot teacher's class…and not to be conceited, but I _am_ the hot teacher. All my colleagues are much older than I am so of course, I'm the most fun teacher to look at. So at first, the only reason the boys wanted to come to my class was to look at me. But my second week, they got to know me and I think they really like me as a teacher. Not saying that they don't still stare at me, but they actually pay attention to me and they get it when I explain something. I let them call me "Wilson" or "Will" because I don't like the sound of "Miss Wilson"…I think that sounds weird or like I'm about to be chastised. In addition to being the hot teacher, I'm also the cool teacher that lets them listen to their iPods or chill on their phones when we have a free minute and every Friday, we have a Yahtzee tournament since it's a Stats class. The thing is…they actually respect me and that's something that I was afraid of. I kind of love my job, which is something I never thought I would say.

All in all, I think we settled into a pretty good routine at this new house. I don't drop Lyla off or get her ready for school in the mornings anymore, since I have to be at work every morning by 7:15, but I do drive down to Millerton after work and pick her up so I am still pretty involved with her school regimen. Actually, my female students adore her, which I find a little strange considering that they've never actually met her. On my first day, I thought it would cool to do a little icebreaker activity because I was the new teacher that replaced the old teacher right after the first semester. So I went around and asked their names and asked them to tell me something about themselves and when everything was said and done, I told them about myself. I told them that I was 29, that I was originally from Massachusetts, that I graduated from both Harvard and Princeton (they found that to be pretty amazing) and I told them that I had a boyfriend who was a pediatrician at the children's hospital and a four year old daughter. My female students lit up when I mentioned my four year old daughter. They asked to see a picture so I showed them a picture of Lyla on her first day of preschool and they gushed over how cute she was. I told them that I'd bring her in for Bring Your Kid To Work Day, whenever that is.

Speaking of Lyla, I'd say that she's pretty well adjusted. She does very well in preschool, she loves her new bedroom and she's elated over the fact that next summer, we'll have a pool in our backyard. I think one of the saddest things about dealing with Lyla though, is the fact that she doesn't remember her mother at all. I knew she was going to forget. She's four and she list her mother when she was three. How much does anyone remember from when they were three? But it's so sad to sit back and watch her forget. She knows that I'm not her real mother. She knows that she had another mommy a little while ago but she can't remember her. She doesn't remember what her voice sounded like, what her personality was like. Alex tries to keep her memory alive but it's pretty hard for her to whenever her memories are all fading. Of course I don't mind that Lyla calls me "mommy" and all variations of the word because I know that I'm going to be around forever and I'll always be a mother to her but it is pretty upsetting to watch her forget that she had an amazing mother before me. She's adjusted though. She's a perfectly happy, healthy, bubbly little girl and the good thing about her faulty child memory is that the memory of her being taken away from Alex is also hazy. Now _that's_ something we really want her to forget.

Like I said, I don't want to jinx anything, but I genuinely think that Alex and I are good. We fight and argue just like any other normal couple but I don't get as worried as I used to get because I truly know that everything is going to be alright at the end of the day. He might say that he hates me and I might tell him the same, but we both know that what we mean to say is that we love each other. I never thought that I could love somebody as much as I love Alex but I do. After losing Mark, I didn't think I would ever be able to love someone again but I fell in love with Alex and the love I have for him is so much deeper, so much stronger than the love I had for Mark. I love him so much and I can't see myself without him. You know how everyone has that one person they're meant to be with? They call it a soulmate. I really do think Alex is mine. Commemorating an entire year since our spouses have died last month really solidified that thought in my mind. We didn't sit around and cry that day. We didn't mope around and become depressed at the fact that it's been a year. Instead, we held onto each other. We held onto each other and we took a look at how far the both of us had come. It's been an entire year and a month since Mark and Jenna have been gone and somehow, I find solace in thinking that the two of them are up there in Heaven or whatever together, taking care of my daughter.

Maybe this is a little strange, but I actually wish I could've met Jenna. Knowing everything I know now, seeing everything I've seen and going through everything I've went through; I really wish I could've met her. I wish I could've sat down and at least held one conversation with her. I don't know how she would've reacted to me because I didn't know her and I don't know how I would've reacted to her either. But I do know that there are some things I wish I could tell her because if she was anything like the kind of person I am, I'd want to know about the woman that's taking over my family. If I could've talked to her, I would've told her that everything was going to be okay. I would've told her that I would take care of both her little girl and her husband and I would let her know that I love them both very, very much. I would tell her that she has nothing to worry about, that she could rest in peace because as long as I'm in her daughter and her husband's life, they'll always be taken care of. There are so many things that I would've wanted to say to her, had I ever been given the chance.

"We've really gotta clean out these boxes tomorrow. This is getting ridiculous, Alex." I wrap my hands around a cardboard box labelled "tree decorations" and slide it out so I can open it. I pick it up and walk it down the hallway from the laundry room and into the living room. It wasn't totally necessary for us to get a new house but I have to admit that it feels good. It's nice to not have to worry about steps, it's nice to not have to ache when I walk upstairs to go to bed, it's nice to not worry if I'm going to fall down while carrying a laundry basket…it's just nice to have everything on one floor. I live in a beautiful house and I think Alex and I are turning out to be a beautiful family. I foresee more children in our future. I think it's going to be through adoption but I'm always open to having his baby if it's ever possible for me to do so. I think we're going to have one more whenever the time is right. For once in my life, I can honestly say that I'm happy. I'm happy with the way my life is turning out and I'm not hesitant to get out of bed every morning. I am happy. "We've been here for a month and we still haven't unpacked." I put the box of decorations down on the coffee table and pull it open.

"Well I'm off tomorrow, so I guess we can work something out." He mumbles, carefully draping white lights all around the bottom of the Christmas tree with somewhat of Lyla's help. She's mostly twisting the lights around and pretending like she's making sure they're shining as brightly as possible. "Anymore lights in that box or can I start hanging those circle things on here already?" He kneels down and plugs in the last strand of lights.

"There aren't any more lights…here, grab some bulbs, Lyla." I slide the box down on the floor and pull out the container of blue bulbs. She leaves the lights of the tree alone and comes over to me. "Go hang them up, okay? Go hang 'em."

"Daddy, can I open up just one gift? Pease? I don't fink Santa will be mad. I been a real big good girl." She picks up two blue bulbs and hangs them towards the bottom of the tree. "Pease, daddy? Just one tiny little fing." She's been begging us to let her open up a gift ever since she heard that Christmas was right around the corner. We're a little late with putting up our Christmas tree but better late than never, right? Something about this Christmas feels different to me though. Maybe it's the fact that there's still grass on the ground here in Florida as opposed to the snow I'm used to having, being that I grew up in New Jersey and Massachusetts. But I'm still doing all the typical Christmas things that I did even when there was snow on the ground. Lyla's running around in a pair of her Frosty the Snowman pajamas, I'm wearing a pair of red and green pajamas and Alex even got festive with a Snowman shirt. I made us hot chocolate on the stove and Lyla and I baked cookies earlier. It's all the same, normal, usual Christmas thing…but it feels different. I think it's the fact that I'm actually decorating a Christmas tree with my own family…or maybe it's the fact that I have a little girl of my own to celebrate Christmas with. "Just one teensy weensy fing, daddy?! Pease?!"

"I'll think about it, Ly." He mumbles again and starts adjusting the lights that are hanging on the tree. I pick up a cookie off the plate sitting on the coffee table and take a bite. They aren't homemade cookies because I can't bake to save my life but we got a pretty good variety going on here. We've got plain sugar cookies, sugar cookies with little Santa Clauses in the middle, chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies and macadamia nut cookies. I like how Alex is acting so calm, cool and collected about not letting her open an early gift or two when in reality, I've been trying to keep him from letting her. If only Lyla knew that we planned on letting her open a gift tonight anyway. It's Christmas Eve, Eve, Eve but we went to get the dog today and he's been sleeping upstairs in our bedroom for a few hours now. We went down to the shelter last week and we signed the adoption papers to a little three month old German Shepherd puppy that we brought home today. He had to get something on his paw taken care of so that's why bringing him home was delayed but the painkillers that the vet gave him made him sleepy and he's been quietly passed out in a cage in the corner of me and Alex's bedroom since 5:30 this evening.

"Actually Lyla, you know Santa called me and daddy this morning?" I sit down on the arm of the couch and chomp on the sugar cookie I picked up off the plate. Her little jaw drops and her eyes get all wide. "Yep. He called me and daddy this morning and he asked us if you were a good girl this year." Alex turns around and looks at me, silently asking if I'm about to go get the dog from our bedroom. I nod my head at him and turn back to Lyla. "He wanted to know, because he got something in the mail for you today and he wanted to know if he could drop it off a little early because he didn't have enough room in his sleigh for it." She gasps. "We told him he could drop it off at 8:30 tonight. Do you know what time it is?" She shakes her head. "Look at the clock and tell me what time it is." She kneels down on the floor and looks at the clock on the cable box underneath the TV. "What time is it?"

"IT'S 8:30! DADDY, LOOK!" She points at the clock and taps Alex's leg. "Look daddy!"

"No way!" Alex says with mock enthusiasm. He stops messing with the lights on the tree and walks over towards where I'm sitting. "Maybe Santa already left it on our doorstep? We should go look. You and me, we should go look…come on." He waves his hand at her and shoots me a look to let me know that I should go get the dog while he takes her outside. Lyla stands right up and merely runs to the front door. "Slow down, Ly!" As soon as she's too busy with the front door, I quickly get up off the arm of the couch and jog down to me and Alex's bedroom. I push the door open and flip the light on. I go over to the side of our bed that's furthest away from the door and get down on my knees. The dog is still laying down towards the back of the cage but he's awake now and he's chewing on a little frog toy that Alex bought at the shelter when we picked him up earlier. He doesn't have a name yet but he's sporting a cute black collar with orange and yellow flames on it.

I open up the cage and reach in to grab him. He's still pretty pint-sized for now but he's going to get huge. "Come here, little buddy…you're gonna meet your new mother." I carefully ease him out of the cage and stand up. I rub between the dog's ears and he yawns, his tail wagging so hard that it's hitting me in my side. He's a cute little dog if I do say so myself. He's got big, pointy ears that stick up, a broad face with a little black nose and black eyes and his coat is a mixture between light brown and black. I think he's adorable. I was hooked when I carried him out of the shelter today and he laid on my chest during the ride home and fell asleep. He's really mild-mannered and timid because he was abused even at three months old and he's not house-trained but he is somewhat paper-trained. I can't wait to see what Lyla names him. The name they gave him at the shelter is "Coby" but I don't think Lyla's going to keep it. With my arm underneath his tiny yet weighty body, I carry the dog out of the bedroom and when I look down the hall, I see that Alex and Lyla are now looking out the back door, which is perfect. I scurry to the front door and hurriedly open it up. I safely deposit the dog on the front step and he looks up at me with his ears back and his head tilted, like he did something wrong. "In a minute, buddy." I lean down and pat his head one last time. I quickly ring the doorbell and hurry up and shut the door to act like I didn't just ring it. "Alex, somebody's at the door!" I try to make it sound like I'm as far away as possible.

Lyla comes barreling down the hallway, running so fast that her feet are kicking up and slapping down on the floor very hard. "I get it daddy! I get it!" She calls back at Alex and stands up on her tiptoes so she can reach the doorknob. I slip out from the bathroom that I ducked inside to make it seem as if I didn't ring the doorbell and shadow behind her just to make sure the dog didn't run. Our yard is fenced-in so he couldn't have gone far if he did run but still. "I get it mommy, it's probably my pwesent." She holds her hand up at me and shuffles with the doorknob. "I get it." She says again. She turns the knob and opens the door and just like I had hoped, the dog is still there. He's sitting down on the welcome mat now, instead of standing but he's still there and that's all that matters. "MOMMY! MOMMY, LOOK! LOOK!" Completely unafraid, she walks right out on the porch and snatches up the puppy. "DADDY! DADDY!"

"What'd you get?!" Alex comes trouping up the hallway. "What is it?"

"A PUPPY DADDY! I GOTTED A PUPPY!" It's apparent that she's struggling to carry the dog but she's managing. She has her arms wrapped around the dog's body up underneath his legs and she's carrying him deeper into the house. I close the door behind her. "LOOKY DADDY!"

"Wow…Santa really outdid himself this year, didn't he?" Alex kneels down on the floor and gently takes the dog off of her so she doesn't hurt him. "You think we should keep him?"

"CAN WE PEASE?! PEASE, DADDY?!" She sits down next to the dog and wraps her arms around him in a hug. "I pwomise I be good!" She looks up at me next. "I KEEP HIM?!"

"…I guess so." Alex scratches between the dog's ears and rubs his head. "What do you wanna name him?"

Completely smitten with the puppy, she kisses him on his head and squeezes her arms around him. "…Hims name is Koda."

"Koda? Where the hell'd you come up with that?" Alex asks.

"Brother Bear." I answer for her. "You really ought to brush up on your Disney, man."

 **X X X**

"Lyla, I don't want the dog sleeping with you. He'll sleep in his cage until we train him not to pee all over the house, got it?" Ever since we went ahead and let her have the dog early, it's been me and Alex finishing up the Christmas tree. Lyla's too busy cuddling with her new baby to even think about helping us anymore and I'm beginning to think that maybe we should've waited until after the tree was done to give her the big surprise. "And you're going to help me and mom take care of him, got that? If he needs food in his bowl, you're going to put it in there and if he needs water, you're in charge of giving it to him. If he pees in the house, you've gotta help clean it. Koda's your responsibility too, you hear me?" Alex hangs more bulbs towards the bag of the tree while I drape silver tinsel around it. Lyla's sitting on the couch watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Koda is laying right next to her. The two of them hit it off so well already. "Lyla Isabella, do you hear me?"

"Yes daddy." The way that she's laying with the dog is kind of priceless. She's laying down on the couch with her head on a pillow and the dog is laying in front of her with his head on the same pillow. Lyla's arms are around him and her chin is on his head…they're legit cuddling. Initially, Alex told her not to let him up on the couch but I assured him that I gave the dog a good bath earlier and he was alright with it. "…Daddy, maybe Koda can sleep wiff me just for tonight 'cause he's scared, okay? Just tonight."

"No, Lyla. He'll sleep in the cage until we train him. He sleeps in the cage and if I find out he was in your bed, I'm telling Santa to take him back." He firmly states. I nudge him with my elbow for being so harsh on Christmas but he doesn't even take it back. I can understand him not wanting the dog to sleep in her bed with her but he doesn't have to be so mean about it. "Lyla?" He calls her name and she utters a merely inaudible "hmmm?" to answer him. "You think daddy and mommy should open up early Christmas gifts too?" He starts untangling the power cord to the star that goes on top of the tree. I step back and look at the tree to see if there's any tinsel that I need to fix. "I think mommy should open something up, don't you? Daddy got his new slippers early, you got your puppy early…don't you think mommy should get something too?" He smashes the star down on top of the tree and bends down to plug it in.

"Yeah, daddy…she should get something early too. Can I give it to her?" All of a sudden, Lyla perks up and drops all her attention away from the movie. "Can I?"

"It's alright, baby. I don't want to open anything early." I shake my head and fix a strand of garland that was hanging too low. I learned at a very early age that opening Christmas presents early wasn't worth it. Back when I was Lyla's age, I used to beg my mom to let me open an early present too. She would always let me and I would always be upset when that gift was the only one I ever had to open up. So when I turned about nine, I stopped asking. I figure it's much better to open up a gift on Christmas Day than to open it up early and have nothing left to open when the day arrives. I'd rather not open up an early gift. "Mommy can wait until Christmas." I told Alex not to waste money on me this year and I really think he listened. He already told me what he got me because I already told him what I got him. I got him a new pair of slippers, a new watch and a new stethoscope…and I made him a ticket for one hour of nonstop sex but that's redeemable at any time. I think he's trying to redeem it later on tonight because he's been dropping hints all day. Anyway, I already know that he got me a pair of gold hoop earrings, a new hair straightener that I picked out the other day when we were in Walmart and a new pair of sneakers for dress down days at work. I picked those out too. "I'd rather be surprised."

"Oh come on, Jo…where's your Christmas spirit?" Alex adjusts the star topper and grins at me. "Grab me the other container of bulbs out of the box, please." He points at the cardboard box still sitting on the table.

"Alex, we do NOT need more bulbs on that tree. It already looks like an Easter tree, don't you dare stick more bulbs on it." I step back and look at it again. It's a pretty looking Christmas tree if I do say so myself, but it doesn't need more bulbs. It has tinsel on it, garland on it, bulbs, lights, a star topper, homemade ornaments from Lyla's preschool days…it's already got so much going on. It doesn't need more.

"Oh shut up and grab me the other carton." He continues to mess around with the topper because it's not perfectly centered on top. I suck my teeth and roll my eyes at him. I walk over to the box and lift out the other container of bulbs. "I want you to put all of those on. Scatter 'em all around." He mumbles. I shake my head at how he's way over-polluting the tree and do as he says. Lyla's all of a sudden interested in the tree decorating all over again, but she doesn't get up to help. Instead, she just sits back on the couch and watches me and Alex like a hawk while he adjusts the star and I start loading more bulbs on it. I scatter some bulbs towards the back of the tree, some towards the bottom, some towards the top…it's looking horrible. Our Christmas tree is hideous now. I pop the remaining two glass bulbs out of the plastic container and look for places to put them that won't make the tree look any worse than it already does. "Those the last two?" I nod my head slowly, still looking. Clearly decorating isn't Alex's strong suit. He should know that the tree has way too much on it. I'm surprised it hasn't collapsed under it's own weight yet. "What's all over your fingers?" He murmurs, briefly glancing down.

I wrinkle my brow and look down at my hands and sure enough, I have this black stuff all over the tips of my fingers. I rub my fingers together and find that it's smearing. "I don't know, what the hell?" I look at the bulbs to see if maybe they're leaking something and there's nothing on the one bulb but on the other one, there's some runny black stuff. I put down the clean one on the table and examine the one with runny stuff on it to see if I can tell what it is. I turn it around and find that my name was on the bulb. It said "Jo 2015" and I don't even know why. "Did you write this in magic marker?" I take my hand off of it and go to grab it by the hook with my clean hand when I find that there's not a hook on it at all. Instead of a hook, there's something circular attached to the top of the bulb. "…Oh my god." My heart starts to pound and my stomach starts to churn. It's circular, thin and so sparkly that it glistens under the lights of the tree. "Oh my god, Alex!"

"Lyla's got something she wants to ask you." He's giving me that goofy little half-smirk and I really think I'm going to fall to my knees and cry. "Go 'head and ask her, Ly." He encourages.

Lyla climbs down off the couch and walks over to me. "My daddy wants to know if you can be my um…my step mommy? He wants to get mawwied."

"Seriously?" I can't feel my legs right now. I can't feel my legs and I'm shaking, I'm wobbling. I'm holding my engagement ring in my hand?! I bring the bulb up closer to my face and look at the ring attached to the end of it. It's so pretty! It's got diamonds all in the band and one big diamond in the middle. It's simple, not too flashy but it's so perfect. I stumble backwards to the couch and sit down on the arm of it. Despite the fact that I have black ink on my hands, I cover my face with them and let everything out. I can't believe he planned this! He just…he asked me to marry him. "Are you serious?" Ii whimper through my tears and try to pull myself together by fanning my face. Tears are just rolling off my cheeks. "Are you serious right now, Alex?" I can't believe he just…I can't believe he came up with this. With the bulb and making me grab it and making me… I cover my face with my hands again and sob. I'm so….happy.

"I was gonna wait." I feel the air beside me shift as he walks over and sits down on the arm of the couch next to me. "I was gonna wait until Christmas…but I decided that I couldn't. I was gonna wrap it up in a box and have you open it and have Ly ask you like she just did, but I didn't want to wait any longer." He puts his hand in the middle of my back. "…Jo, this doesn't mean that we have to do it right away. I know couples that stay engaged for years…I'm just…" He sighs. "I just want you to be off the market. I want to put a ring on it so everyone knows…and I want you to be my wife, eventually when the time is right. Because I love you. I love you, I'm… _in_ love with you and…I don't know, I guess I want this forever." He shrugs his shoulders. "I'm not a…get-down-on-one-knee kind of guy and I hope you understand that. But I'm just asking. Will you marry me?" I sniff and start nodding my head. He takes the ring off the bulb and grabs my hand. "Are you saying yes?"

"I'm saying…hell yes." I wipe my eyes. "…I gotta call my mom. I'm freaking out right now." I fan myself with my hands again. "Hell yes, baby." I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him in for a much-needed and well-deserved kiss. Our tongues swirl together and I can just feel the passion radiating between us. I love this man with all my heart. I love everything he is, everything he isn't. I just love him. Of course I'll marry him. I'd be a fool not to. He's my soulmate. He's it for me. I love him. "I love you."

"I can't believe you said yes." He rests his forehead against mine and leaves our noses touching. "I can't believe you said yes…" He leans in and kisses me again. "You said yes!"

"Of course I did."

* * *

 **Alex's Point of View.**

I slowly back out of the room to ensure that I don't wake her up and close the door right along with my exit. I told her that I didn't want the dog to sleep with her tonight and guess what? The dog is right in the bed with her. He's laying on the outside of her quilt and her arm is draped across him and they're both passed out. I think I made a pretty solid decision in getting her the dog. She seems to love it and the dog seems to love her. Koda…what a hell of a name though. I leave the door cracked just in case the dog wakes up and wants to get out and I softly pad down the hall to me and Jo's room. We conveniently put Lyla all the way at the end of the hall when we were choosing rooms and our room is at the beginning of the hall. Just in case Jo and I get loud during our sex episodes, she won't be able to hear if she's all the way at the other end of the house. I also think I made a pretty solid decision in buying a new house too. Ever since we've been living here, I've felt so much closer to Jo. I feel like we're actually a real couple now and this house is our house. It's our place…a place that we're making memories in together, starting with today.

I still can't believe she said yes. I wasn't expecting her to say no, I just wasn't expecting her to…say yes. Put it this way; I knew she was going to say yes but still, hearing her actually say it was an incredible feeling. She agreed to marry me. She agreed to spend the rest of her life with me…there's no better feeling than that right there. Like I said, me proposing doesn't mean that we have to go out and get married tomorrow. It just means that she's off the market and she's not going anywhere. It means that any man that looks at her finger will know that they have to back off because she's taken. And it means that she's going to be Mrs. Karev eventually. I don't think anybody has any idea how that feels. If it wasn't so late in the night, I would call my dad and tell her that she said yes. Everyone knew that I was planning this except for Jo. I rehearsed with Lyla on what to say, my dad was the one that said I should propose on Christmas and Michelle helped me pick out the ring. I sized her finger up in her sleep and I got the size perfectly. I was going to wait until Christmas but I just couldn't. I was bursting with excitement, I had the ring in my pocket all day because I showed it off at work today and I just got too excited. I panicked and I came up with something cheesy at the last minute…and she said yes. We're going to get married eventually. Maybe it's a little early…we've only been dating since July. But when you know you love someone, you know. And with Jo…I think she's the one. I really believe she's the one that was made especially for me. When God or whatever sent her down from Heaven or whatever, he packaged her up and wrote in her destiny that we were meant to be together. She's it for me. I just know she is.

I push open the door to me and Jo's bedroom and see her kneeling down on the floor in front of a box. We really should unpack our house. We've been living here for a month and we still haven't fully unpacked. I walk over to her and kneel down right next to her. "…You sure it's not too big?" I grab her hand and admire the ring on her finger some more. "You sure it's alright?"

"It's perfect, baby." She smiles, not showing any teeth and looks at the ring herself. "It's absolutely perfect. I have to get used to it though." She brushes over it with her thumb and just stares. "…Help me unpack." She finally stops staring at her finger and continues to take the contents out of the box like she was just doing. "This is the last box we have to unpack before our room is officially finished." She takes out our alarm clock and our extra TV remotes. "….My mom said she's jealous of the ring. I sent her a picture of it and she called me screaming about how jealous she is." I chuckle. "It is a very pretty ring…you did good." She rests her head on my shoulder for a moment before picking it back up. "Here. Sort through all of these." She picks up a stack of papers and hands them to me.

I mindlessly start filing through all the papers to see what's necessary for me to keep and what's not. I don't even want to think about where I would be if she never came into my life. If Jo never came into my life, I would still be a single dad and living in Millerton. I would've never found the strength to move on after Jenna. That's the thing though. I wasn't ready to move on to just anyone. The only person I could've moved on to was her. She was…she was like a freight train. She came barreling into my life unannounced and unexpected and I can't believe she did but I'm so glad that she did. She caught a bus to Florida one day and just like that, my life was complete again. Just like that, I met the one for me. I believe that good things have to come apart so that greater things can come together. Jenna…I loved her. I loved my wife with every bone in my body but she wasn't the one and god or fate or whatever…they knew that. They knew that Jenna Maloney wasn't meant for Alex Karev. Somewhere in the stars, to the gods, it was written that Jo Wilson was the one that Alex Karev was supposed to be with. And my good thing with Jenna fell apart so that my great thing with Jo came together. I had so many checklists for my next woman to pass and Jo met all the necessary qualifications. That's not coincidence. Our spouses died on the same day. That's not a coincidence. She just so happened to end up in the most sleepy, remote, boring town in all of Florida when she hopped a bus. That's not a coincidence. She lost a husband and a daughter while I lost a wife and a mother. That's not a coincidence. Jo's my soulmate, my meant to be thing. She's an amazing woman, an amazing mother to my daughter and she's going to be an amazing wife. It took a lot for me to love again. It took a lot for me to decide to let someone else in. But I did…and I couldn't be happier.

As I'm sorting through the papers, I find that giant yellow envelope again. The first time I found it; back when I was packing, my heart stopped. My heart stopped, it dropped to the pit of my stomach and I immediately felt nauseous. But this time, I feel fine. I feel alright. So since I feel alright, I turn the envelope around and I open it up. And still feeling okay, I dump all the letters out into my lap. And I sift through them until I finally find the one addressed to "Alex" with a heart next to the name. I pick it up and hold it, staring at the handwriting…waiting, waiting to see if maybe I feel anything like I did the first time I saw this letter, a month ago while I was packing. And I don't feel anything. In fact, I feel like I should open it. I slip my finger underneath the divot in the envelope and crack it open. I've told Jo about the letters once. I told her that Jenna left letters to Lyla but I didn't tell her about the one she left to me. She leans over to see what it is that I'm looking at, but it's not long before she decides that it's not her business. But the thing is…I don't mind her looking. Jenna was my past, Jo's my present and my future. She can look if she wants. I take the lined white paper out of the envelope and unfold it. I clear my throat, lean towards Jo to let her know that I don't mind if she looks. She rests her head on my shoulder and we both read it silently, together.

 _Dearest Alex,_

 _You don't know, nor will you ever know, how much it pains me to write this. On this envelope, I told you to read this letter only if you're ready. As always, you have pretty solid judgment so if you're reading this, I trust that you are ready. I know you already know this and I know you don't need to hear it but I think it bears repeating for me to say that I love you, Alex. I always have, I always will, even far beyond my grave when I'm gone. Being sick puts a lot of things into perspective for a person and for exactly one year, three months and eighteen days, I've had time to sit and ponder on what love really means. I'm not so sure what it means to you anymore because I'm not so sure that I know you anymore. For the entire length of my sickness, I've watched you waste away and become less of yourself and to me, that's the hardest part of this all. I love you, Alex. Do you know what that means?_

 _Take care of our girl. She's going to need lots of love when I'm gone, time and attention. She's our little girl and I know you love her. It will be hard at first, but I know that you can do it. She's counting on you so don't let her down._

 _When you love someone, you want to see them happy no matter what. It's safe to say that when I married you all those years ago, I never thought I would have to give you away. Alas, as I am writing this, I've become quite comfortable with the idea. I do not want for you to mourn me. Please don't cry, please don't sulk and Alex, please don't give up. Do you remember what you promised me? I do. You promised me that you would find love again. You promised me that you would find someone to share the rest of your life with, someone to be there for our little girl in ways that I can no longer be. I hope you didn't think that the promise was silly, half-hearted or meaningless because it wasn't. Be okay without me, not only for Lyla's sake but for your own as well. You promised you wouldn't be alone for the rest of your life and I'm holding you to that. I remember the promise, do you? Of course you do, otherwise, you wouldn't be reading this right now._

 _And finally, to the woman reading this with my Alex:_

 _I want to say thank you. If you're reading this with him (and I know you are, otherwise he wouldn't have been ready enough to open this), then it really must be true. He must love you and I know that you know he does. I assume you've gotten to know my husband and since you have, you know that he loves you just the way I know he does. My only wish is that somehow, I could have been able to meet you. Maybe in some ways, I am meeting you…after all, nobody knows what happens when it's their time. I want you to know that I am incredibly grateful that my husband has found you. Aside from my husband and my gorgeous little girl, you are undeniably the most important person in my universe because now, I have to trust you with my most prized possessions. Take care of my husband and my girl, please because painful as it is for me to say it, they belong to you now. If you love my Alex, please love him forever. I assume you know how hard he loves and he'll never give up on you, just like he never did to me. For quite some time now, I have watched my husband waste away and become less of the man he used to be. So I am asking you this; take care of Alex for me. Make him into the person he once was. Make him laugh again, make him smile again, make him want to sing in the shower again. Take walks with him, spend the day on the beach and for god's sake, remind him to clean his facial hair up out of the sink! I also expect you to love my little girl the way that I love her. Chastise her, discipline her, put her in her place. But also, hold her when she cries, love her when she's ornery, and please teach her what to do when she finally becomes a woman. Love them both as much as I do…maybe even more. This might sound strange, but I love you and I thank you for making my family whole once again. I trust that you will do all of these things if you haven't already—Alex wouldn't have picked you if you didn't. Please take care of them…_

 _They belong to you now._

 _-Jenna._

I fold it back up and turn my head to look at Jo, only to find that she's crying softly. I rest my cheek against the top of her head and wrap my arm around her. I know what Jenna meant when she said "open when you're ready" now…and it had nothing to do with me being emotionally ready. It had nothing to do with me being ready to handle the letters contents. My wife knew me so well that she knew that when I was ready…I would have a woman here by my side and that's what she meant by "when you're ready". She didn't mean ready to cry, ready to face what this letter had to say. She meant ready to be myself again…ready to love again. She knew that when I was ready, I would have someone else…someone she could pass the torch off to. That's what she meant by ready. I crack a dry, meaningless smirk and kiss the side of Jo's head. "Let's finish unpacking." I whisper to her. She nods her head. I neatly shove the letter back into the envelope and swallow a lump in my throat, but I do not cry. And I don't cry because this…is finally a chapter that I'm ready to close in my life. But as always, when one chapter closes…

Another one begins.


End file.
